ch8 : Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4
ch8 : Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4
chapter 8
It is just a joke
30 August 1975 am in Buddha Hall
The first question:
Question 1
YOU TELL US AGAIN AND AGAIN NOT TO DESIRE ENLIGHTENMENT
AND YET YOU ALSO REMIND US AGAIN AND AGAIN HOW IMPOVERISHED AND WHAT RUBBISH OUR LIVES ARE,
AND TELL US HOW BLISSFUL AND RICH ENLIGHTENMENT IS.
HOW CAN ONE AVOID PREFERRING BLISS TO RUBBISH?
Preference is the greatest problem.
If you prefer, you miss.
If you prefer bliss to rubbish your concept of bliss is already rubbish.
If you don’t prefer,
if you remain alert and non-Preferring,
in a deep choiceless awareness,
even rubbish itself becomes blissful.
Rubbish and bliss are not two things.
If you prefer everything is rubbish.
If you don’t prefer – everything becomes blissful.
This world and nirvana are not two things.
This world exists because of your choice.
If choice disappears, the world disappears.
Suddenly there is enlightenment and nothing else.
It is just in front of your eyes.
Prefer, and you will miss it,
because preference means the mind has entered.
Choice is mind.
When you say:
I choose this and I don’t choose that,
you have already divided the world into two;
the duality has entered.
Now the non-dual is lost,
the one is lost,
the unity is no more there.
If you don’t choose the duality disappears
because it IS because of your choice;
you support it by your choice,
that’s why it exists.
If you don’t support it by your choice it has disappeared.
Already there is nothing to choose and no one to choose.
Enlightenment is not something that you have to choose.
When there is no choice that which remains IS enlightenment.
I understand your difficulty,
because the choice comes again and again.
You may even choose not to choose;
if I insist that choicelessness is the door you may start choosing IT
– but then you missed,
you could not understand me.
Nothing is to be done,
just a tacit understanding is needed.
Just by listening to me,
if you understand it,
it has already happened.
There is nothing else to do.
Don’t ask HOW.
Just try to understand what I am saying:
Don’t bring the desire in.
Let the understanding be clear.
When you say:
THIS IS WRONG you have denied a part of existence as wrong.
Now you can never be the whole
– and enlightenment belongs to the whole!
It is a flowering of the whole.
A part cannot be enlightened,
only the whole.
If you say:
THIS IS GOOD AND THAT IS BAD,
and THIS I CHOOSE AND THAT I REJECT,
who is making these rejections, choices?
The I, the ego, is dividing existence like a sword, cutting it in two.
If you understand it,
you don’t divide.
In a non-divided existence,
nothing is lacking.
You suddenly start dancing.
It has happened.
YOU TELL US AGAIN AND AGAIN NOT TO DESIRE ENLIGHTENMENT
– Yes.
Because desire is the bondage.
The so-called religions have been teaching people to desire enlightenment.
They have created much confusion.
I am doing nothing,
just clearing the whole confusion that has been put into your mind.
They say:
Don’t desire the world,
don’t desire worldly objects,
don’t desire money,
don’t desire power, prestige
– desire God,
desire enlightenment,
desire heaven,
desire virtue.
But when you desire virtue,
when you desire God,
nothing has changed in you.
Only the object of desire has changed.
Desiring has remained the same.
First you were desiring money,
now you desire God.
The object has changed,
now you have an other-worldly object,
but have you gone through any transformation?
You still desire.
The nature of desire is the same,
it doesn’t depend on the object.
God or money makes no difference.
You desire – that is the thing.
Because in desire,
you have moved into the future.
In desire you have already missed the present moment.
Desire means you are not here-now.
Now the mind has gone somewhere else.
And how can you enjoy that which is happening now,
when the mind is somewhere else?
How can you delight in that which is already showering on you when the mind is not here?
Life goes on showering,
God goes on surrounding you,
but your mind is somewhere else
– in the future,
in some result,
in desire.
That’s how you miss!
Desire allows you space to move into nowhere;
and you are always here,
your concrete existence is always in the present.
But the desire helps to create other worlds which are not.
Look at a man desiring money.
He has ten thousand rupees
– he cannot enjoy them
because he is desiring ten lakhs of rupees.
He is miserable.
Those ten thousand don’t make him rich.
He is miserable.
Those ten lakhs that he is desiring make him poor.
He will enjoy only when ten lakhs are there.
But, do you think he will enjoy?
When ten lakhs are there the mind must have moved again,
because the mind has learned the trick of how to move:
from ten thousand to ten lakhs,
from ten lakhs to ten crore!
The proportion, the distance, will remain the same.
By the time he attains ten lakhs
the mind is already desiring ten crore.
He cannot enjoy ten lakhs,
he is not rich because of them,
he is poor because of ten crore.
You start meditating,
you cannot enjoy that which is happening to you,
your mind thinks of enlightenment.
And I tell you,
even if it was possible for enlightenment to happen
– which is not possible –
you would not be able to enjoy it.
Your mind would move to some other GREAT enlightenment.
That is the nature of desire
– to go on moving.
If God was there just standing in front of you,
you would have already moved to some other great God
– this God won’t do.
Not enough.
Not fulfilling.
One has to understand how the mind functions, that’s all.
A tacit understanding of the functioning of the mind
– and suddenly you start laughing;
the whole trick is understood.
Then, it is not a question of changing objects
but of simply dropping the desire
– and when I say ’dropping the desire’ please don’t misunderstand me.
I don’t mean that YOU drop it.
When the tacit understanding is there,
IT DROPS.
Suddenly you see the point:
that life is HERE,
and desire is THERE.
You see the point
– and desire disappears.
It is just a line of smoke around you,
nothing substantial.
You need not even push it.
You understand – it has disappeared.
Not that you drop desire,
because I know, how can you drop it?
You can drop it only if some other desire is substituted.
If I say:
Drop the desire of money
because then you can attain to God!
– you can drop it,
because I am giving you another object to desire.
You can drop the old
– because with the old you yourself have already become frustrated and fed up.
Now this new object will help the desire for a few days;
then you can drop it again.
Objects can be dropped if desire is allowed.
Mind is not worried about objects.
When you drop the desire, the mind disappears.
Mind is desiring,
mind is not an entity.
Mind is not something there,
mind is just a process – of desiring.
You desire? – mind is there.
You don’t desire? – mind is not there.
And when mind is not, enlightenment is.
So I am not saying DO SOMETHING for it, no.
I am saying simply:
Have a look,
a relaxed look at it.
And that will do.
But listening to me you start being greedy.
You start feeling:
How beautiful to be enlightened!
How beautiful to know the truth!
How beautiful to realize God!
You start feeling greedy
– watch the greediness,
otherwise God will become an object,
and all objects belong to the world.
There is no other-worldly object.
All objects belong to the market.
There are no other objects which are not commodities in the market;
because whatsoever helps your desire.
helps you to be in this rubbish,
to be in this nightmare.
So don’t try to do something.
I am not saying drop desiring,
I am saying simply understand the process of desire.
The moment you have understood
you will see it has dropped.
... AND YET YOU ALSO REMIND US AGAIN AND AGAIN HOW IMPOVERISHED AND WHAT RUBBISH OUR LIVES ARE.
I have to remind you
because that is how it is.
Your lives ARE rubbish.
And there IS a way of being which is tremendously blissful.
I have to remind you again and again that
the way you are living is not a way of life,
it is a way of dying.
You are simply killing yourself.
And I have to remind you;
there is a way where nothing else
but infinite bliss exists.
But I am not saying this to create a preference.
I am not saying this to create a choice,
I am not saying leave this and choose that,
drop this and try to achieve that – no,
I am not saying that.
I am simply saying that the achieving mind creates rubbish,
and the non-achieving mind is blissful.
So if you start making efforts to attain to that blissful state
you will show that you have not understood me.
This has always happened:
Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu 老子
– were never understood;
people never understood them.
They were deeply misunderstood.
Whatsoever they said was taken in a totally different way.
They were saying something else,
absolutely different;
from a different dimension they were talking.
And then people create followings,
people create organizations,
people create methods,
and people go on doing a thousand and one things
– and missing the whole point.
And the point is very simple.
Not knowledge,
not much intelligence is needed,
just a purity,
an innocent look.
So watch me;
and what I am saying
– listen to it,
as you listen to music.
Music does not mean much,
in fact it doesn’t MEAN at all
– it just sounds.
But music gives you something of the unknown.
Listen to me as if you are listening to music,
to a different dimension;
don’t try to interpret me,
don’t translate me in your mind,
just listen.
Try to be more alert,
not to be more intelligent.
Try to be more conscious,
so you don’t miss anything.
And some day
– and that day is unpredictable,
nobody can say when –
you will be tuned in.
And suddenly,
the night disappears.
It has never been there.
It was just illusory.
When Buddha attained,
he was asked:
What have you attained?
He said:
Nothing.
I have not attained anything.
I have come to understand only that that which I was seeking had always been within me.
The seeker was the sought.
I have not attained to anything.
I have only RECOGNIZED.
I have only come to an awareness,
to an awakening.
I have looked into myself,
and nothing was lacking.
Everything has been perfect from the very beginning.
In this existence nothing is imperfect.
The imperfection is not possible
because the whole is so perfect,
incomparably perfect.
Only the perfect can come out of the perfect,
so how is imperfection possible?
It must be that you are deluded.
Somewhere, you have created the notion of imperfection,
otherwise nobody is imperfect.
You are Buddhas!
You may be knowing, not knowing,
that is for you to choose:
to know or not to know.
But your reality is the reality of a Buddha.
Gods Anonymous.
Not knowing,
not acquainted with themselves,
but all gods.
Fast asleep maybe,
but still a god is a god,
asleep or awake.
So when I tell you,
and I have to tell you,
and insist again and again,
that there is a way of being where every moment is infinite bliss,
where every moment is ecstatic,
and you are living in rubbish
– please, don’t create a desire,
because desire creates rubbish.
Understand the thing,
and let desire slip out of your hands.
Suddenly
– and it is always sudden,
without any gradual process –
one is awake.
The morning has come.
You are back home.
You ask how one can avoid preferring bliss to rubbish.
You have to avoid,
otherwise you will create rubbish.
Difficult, I know.
I understand your difficulty,
because my difficulty was once the same.
But as I understand your difficulty,
please try to understand what I am saying.
The same difficulty has been my difficulty;
and I know how impossible
it is not to create a desire for God,
how impossible it is when you understand something is beautiful, blissful, not to long for it.
But by and by you will come to feel the knack of it.
Because whenever you desire it,
you will miss it.
Then you will have to understand that by desiring you miss.
This comes only by experience.
Many times you will fall.
But don’t be discouraged.
Get up again,
and be going.
Many times you will fall
and you will start desiring.
It is so subtle that you may even be thinking you have not chosen,
you have not preferred,
and you have preferred.
But the more alert you are,
one day or other it will happen.
It has happened to me,
and I was in the same plight,
and the same was the difficulty for me
– how not to desire that which is blissful.
How simply NOT to desire,
and remain desireless,
not preferring anything to anything else,
just being,
without any preference.
I know, it is almost impossible
– but it happens.
Impossibles happen.
They are the real miracles.
It has happened.
And so I know it is going to happen to you.
Just persist.
Don’t get discouraged by mistakes and errors.
Get up again,
have another try.
It is a groping in the dark.
But the door is there,
so if you go on groping enough,
you will stumble upon the door.
That’s why religion can never become a science
– never!
It will always remain a groping.
At the most it can be an art
and that so subtle that it cannot be taught.
So I insist to you: go on groping.
One day it happens.
How it happens,
why it happens,
remains a mystery.
In fact nobody has ever been able to exactly say
HOW it happens.
If somebody can say how it happens,
a science can be created.
Then you know the technique.
Then you can do a certain act,
and it happens.
It has happened millions of times,
but there is no causality in it,
so you cannot determine how it happens.
It can be caused.
Each time it happens it happens uniquely!
Each time it happens it happens in such a new way that it has never happened before like that.
And it will not happen again like that.
Because each individual is so different,
so unique,
so individual,
that the happening is going to be different.
From my continuous reminding you,
don’t start longing for it.
Allow it to happen – don’t desire it.
In desire you become active, aggressive.
in allowing you simply wait, in deep receptivity.
Waiting for the guest,
standing by your door....
Nothing can be done!
When the guest will come,
he will come!
You be ready to receive, that’s all.
Not desiring creates receptivity.
Desiring makes you aggressive.
Desire makes you active,
non- desiring makes you inactive
– that’s what Lao Tzu 老子says by WU-WEI 無爲（無為）,
action by inaction,
doing things by not doing them.
Don’t desire – and it happens.
Desire – and you have missed.
Don’t prefer, and it is there.
Seek – and you go infinitely seeking,
and you never attain to it.
Deep receptivity.
This is the mechanism of desire:
if you desire,
your whole energy becomes active, aggressive
– it moves,
it becomes male.
If you don’t desire,
the same energy becomes receptivity,
it does not move out,
it does not go anywhere,
it simply waits,
awaits deeply,
it becomes feminine.
Hence the insistence of Lao Tzu 老子 on feminine energy.
The world is the manifestation of male energy.
And enlightenment,
the other world, the other shore,
is the manifestation of feminine energy.
Wait like a beloved.
And any moment it can happen
– you will be surprised!
Whenever it happens,
everybody to whom it happens is surprised
– surprised by the fact that he was not doing anything and it has happened.
Taken aback!
Cannot believe it!
Unbelievably true!
Absurd!
Because when he was doing everything it never happened,
it didn’t happen,
and now he was not doing anything
– and suddenly it is there!
In non-doing your energy is in a deep rest.
It becomes pure, tranquil.
God has always been in front of you
– just in front of your eyes.
But your eyes are wavering with desire.
Let the desire go,
eyes waver no more,
you are tranquil,
calm, quiet
– suddenly it is there, revealed.
The second question:
Question 2
IT IS REPORTED THAT ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI COULD TALK WITH BIRDS AND THEY WOULD LISTEN.
IS THIS PRAYER?
I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOU TALK A BIT MORE ABOUT PRAYER.
I told you about four planes:
sex,
love,
prayer,
meditation.
Sex is a meeting of two bodies
– the most superficial meeting.
Love is the meeting of minds
– deeper than sex,
but yet not very deep.
Prayer is the meeting of beings,
but still, two remain two:
very deep meeting, in depth, meeting to the depth,
but still two remain two.
Meditation is the ultimate meeting
– the two disappear.
Only one remains.
St. Francis talking to the birds is in prayer.
The birds cannot understand the mind,
mind is human;
but heart they have.
If you can talk with the heart
they can understand.
The understanding will be of the heart,
remember, not of the mind.
If you are trying with the mind
there will be no communication with the birds, with animals
– no communication,
because they don’t have the human mind,
mind is a human phenomenon.
But they have a deep heart,
a feeling phenomenon.
If you feel for them you can talk.
You can talk to the trees,
and they will listen.
You can talk to the rocks,
and they will listen.
And if you are really a heart oriented man
– they will answer,
because then you can also listen.
If you go and taLk to the trees,
and you don’t know whether they are listening or not,
that shows that you have been talking from the head.
You will look foolish to yourself,
talking to them.
You will watch to see if somebody is listening or not.
If somebody passes by, you will stop.
You know that this is foolish
– how can birds understand?
how can trees understand?
But if you are talking from the heart
they not only understand,
they answer.
Heart has a different way of communication,
it is an energy communication which,
it is said,
many saints in the world
– St. Francis of Assisi is the most famous –
have.
Now it has become a scientific truth;
now many researchers all over the world are working and many facts have come up:
now they say that plants have very deep sensitivity,
deeper than humanity,
because human sensitivity is disturbed by the mind,
intellect Man has completely forgotten how to feel;
even when he says ’I feel’,
in fact he thinks that he feels.
People come to me and they say:
We ale in love.
And if I insist:
Really, are you in love?
they shrug their shoulders and they say:
Well, we think we are in love.
Now feeling is not direct,
it comes through the head;
and when it comes through the head it is confused.
It is not bubbling from the heart.
But now scientific researchers have come to know that not only birds but plants, and not only plants, even metals, have a sensitivity, and they feel
– and they feel tremendously.
And they give messages which you may not be able to catch
but now scientists have created instruments which can detect the messages given by them.
If they are in fear they start trembling.
You may not be able to see the trembling,
it is very subtle.
With no wind blowing,
the detectors show that the plant inside is trembling very much.
When they are happy,
they are ecstatic,
the instruments show that the plants are ecstatic.
When they are in pain, afraid, filled with anger, rage
– all sorts of feelings can now be detected.
Something very deep has happened to man;
a wound, an accident
– he has lost the touch of feelings.
If you talk to trees, to birds, to animals,
long enough, and you don’t feel foolish,
because the mind will interfere
and say that this is foolish;
if you don’t listen to the mind
and by and by you bypass it and connect directly,
a tremendous energy of feeling will be released in you.
You will become totally a new sort of being.
You had never known these ways were possible to be.
You will become sensitive
– sensitive to pain and pleasure.
That’s why humanity has stopped the functioning of feeling:
because when you become sensitive to pleasure,
you also become sensitive to pain.
The more you can feel happy
the more you can feel unhappy also.
That fear,
that one can become very unhappy,
has closed you,
has helped human mind to create barriers so that you cannot feel.
When you cannot feel
– both ways are closed:
you cannot become unhappy,
you cannot become happy.
But try!
It is a prayer.
Because it is heart to heart.
First try with human beings
– just with your own child,
sit silently with the child.
Allow feeling.
Don’t bring the mind in.
Sit with your wife,
or with your friend,
or your husband,
holding hands together in a dark room,
not doing anything,
just trying to feel each other.
In the beginning it will be difficult,
but by and by you will have a different mechanism functioning within you,
you will start FEELING.
Almost one third of persons,
that is thirty-three per cent of persons,
can revive their heart very easily.
It is not dead in them.
For the remaining others it may be difficult.
One third of all people are body oriented,
one third are heart oriented,
one third are head oriented.
Those who are heart oriented,
thirty-three per cent,
they can revive prayer very easily.
Those who are head oriented,
it will be difficult for them to have any feeling.
For them prayer does not exist.
Buddha himself, and Mahavir, are head oriented people.
That’s why prayer was not a part of their religions.
They have not taught about prayer.
They were intelligent people, well-trained intellectually, logically.
They developed meditation
but they have not talked about prayer.
Nothing like prayer exists in Jainism, cannot exist.
It exists in Islam
– Mohammed is a heart oriented person,
he has a different quality.
It exists in Christianity
– Jesus is a heart oriented person.
It exists in Hinduism,
but not in Buddhism or Jainism, nothing like prayer there.
And one third of people are body oriented.
They are the potential CHARWAKAS.
For them no prayer, no meditation
– only indulgence,
only indulgence in the body,
that is their only way of being happy,
their only way of being.
So if you are a heart oriented person,
if you feel more than you think,
if music gives you deep stirrings,
if poetry touches you,
if beauty surrounds you,
and you can feel,
then Prayer is for you
– you have to go through prayer.
Then start talking to birds and trees
– and the sky, it will be helpful.
But don’t make it a mind talk,
let it be heart to heart.
Be related.
That’s why people of the heart think about God as father or as beloved;
some relation.
The head oriented people are always laughing
– what nonsense you are talking!
God, the father?
Then where is the mother?
They always make a joke out of it
because they cannot understand.
For them God is truth.
For the people of the heart God is love.
And for the people of the body,
the world is God:
their money,
their house,
their car,
their power,
their prestige.
A man who is body oriented needs a different type of religion.
In fact only just now in the West,
particularly in America,
a new sort of work has started which is for the body oriented man.
That work is towards body sensitivity.
Many sensitivity training groups are working.
A new sort of religion is being born
– for the first time.
In the past there have been two types of religion:
meditation oriented
– Buddha and Mahavir;
prayer oriented
– Mohammed, Jesus, Krishna and Ram
but there has never been a body oriented religion.
There have been body oriented people
but they have always said that there is no religion,
because they denied prayer,
they denied meditation.
These are the epicureans, CHARWAKAS,
the atheists who say there is no God,
only this body and this life is all.
But they never created a religion.
For the first time in America now a new approach towards entering into the innermost core of life,
is gaining hold,
and that is body-sensitivity training.
It is good, it is beautiful,
because there are body oriented people,
they need a different type of religion.
They need a religion which allows their body to function in a religious way.
For these people tantra can be very helpful.
For these people prayer and meditation will not be helpful.
But there must be a way from the body also towards God,
has to be,
because God has come to the body;
the body must have a way to reach to God.
These are the three types of religions.
You have to find out what type you belong to.
And this is not very difficult;
if you watch for three weeks continuously in different ways,
you can have the feel of it.
If you are body oriented,
don’t be discouraged,
there are ways you can reach towards God through the body,
because the body also belongs to God,
you can reach through it.
If you feel you are heart oriented
– then prayer.
If you feel you are intellect oriented
– then meditation.
But my meditations are different in a way.
I have tried to devise methods which can be used by all three types.
Much of the body is used in them.
Much of the heart.
And much intelligence.
All the three are joined together,
and they work on different people in a different way.
If a body oriented person comes to me
he immediately loves the methods
– but he loves the active parts,
and he comes to see me and he says:
Wonderful, active parts are wonderful,
but when I have to stand silently
– then there is nothing.
He feels very healthy through them;
he feels more rooted in the body.
If a heart oriented person comes to me
the cathartic part becomes more important for him;
the heart is released,
relieved of burdens,
and it starts functioning in a new way.
And when a third type,
the type who belongs to intelligence, comes,
he loves the last parts
when he is just sitting or standing silently,
when it becomes meditation.
Body,
heart,
mind
– all my meditations move in the same way:
they start from the body,
they move through the heart,
they reach to the mind
– and then they go beyond.
Through body you can relate to existence.
You can go to the sea and enjoy swimming in it
– but just become the body;
without feeling,
no thinking,
just being ’of the body’.
Lie down on the sands
and let the body feel the sands,
the coolness,
the texture.
Run
– just now I was reading a very beautiful book
ZEN OF RUNNING
– that is for body oriented people.
One man has discovered that by running there is no need to meditate,
just by running meditation happens.
He must be absolutely body oriented.
Nobody has ever thought that by running meditation is possible
– but I know,
I used to love running myself.
It happens.
If you go on running,
if you run fast,
thinking stops,
because thinking cannot possibly continue when you are running very fast.
For thinking an easy chair is needed,
that’s why we call thinkers armchair philosophers;
they sit and relax in a chair,
the body completely relaxed,
then the whole energy moves into the mind.
If you are running
then the whole energy moves into the body,
then there is no possibility for the mind to think.
And when you run fast,
you breathe deep,
you exhale deep,
you become just the body.
A moment comes when you ARE the body,
nothing else.
In that moment you become one with the universe
because there is no division.
The air running past you and your body become one.
A deep rhythm happens.
That’s why games have always been so attractive to people.
And athletics.
And that’s why children love so much dancing, running, jumping they are bodies!
The mind has not yet developed.
If you feel you are the body type,
then running can be very beautiful for you:
a four, five mile run every day.
And make it a meditation.
It will transform you completely.
But if you feel you are a heart oriented person then prayer will be needed.
Talk to birds, try to have a communion.
Just wait,
sit silently with a deep prayer that they should come to you,
and they will start coming by and by.
By and by they will be sitting on your shoulders.
Accept them.
Talk to trees, to rocks,
but let it be a heart talk, emotional.
Cry and weep and laugh.
Tears can be more prayerful than words,
and laughter can be more prayerful than words,
because they come deep down from the heart.
No need to verbalize – just feel.
Embrace the tree and FEEL,
as if you are becoming one with it.
And soon you will feel that the sap is not running only in the tree,
it has started to run in you.
And your heart is not beating only in you;
deep down in the tree there is a response.
One has to do it to feel it.
But if you feel that you are a third type,
then meditation is for you.
Running won’t help.
Then you will have to sit like Buddha,
silently, just sitting doing nothing.
Sitting so deeply that even thinking looks like a doing.
And you drop it.
For a few days the thoughts will continue,
but if you go on sitting,
just watching them,
without any judgement for or against,
they stop visiting you.
They stop by and by,
gaps come,
intervals happen.
In those intervals you will have the glimpses of your being.
Those glimpses can be had from the body,
they can be had from the heart,
they can be had from the head.
All the possibilities are there
because your being is in all the three and yet beyond the three.
It is the same distance from all the three points
– and it is the fourth point;
that’s why in the East we call it TURIYA,
the fourth.
You can approach it from anywhere.
So when somebody comes to me and says:
I don’t believe in God,
I say:
Don’t worry.
Do you believe in your body?
That will do.
Because the body belongs to God.
And I cannot see that there is any possibility of the fourth type.
There is not.
Religion becomes universal,
available to everybody.
Wherever you are the door is open;
and NO DOOR IS closed.
In the past the tendency has been to deny the other
– if Buddha thinks that by meditation,
a no-thought state of mind,
one reaches,
then he will deny the possibility of heart.
The possibility of the body has ALWAYS been denied.
I don’t deny anything.
I look at you
– wherever you are you are related to God.
Some possibility is there,
some door opens exactly where you stand.
Nobody can be out of the possibility.
Everybody can start working in himself.
No belief is needed;
as you are you are accepted.
That’s why it becomes a little difficult for people to understand me,
because I go on accepting.
I have no condemnation and no rejection.
Because I see that God accepts you,
then who am I to reject you?
He goes on breathing in you,
he goes on living in you;
you may be an alcoholic or a drug taker and he has not left you yet,
so whom am I to tell you that you are not accepted?
You may be a thief,
you may be immortal,
but as I see it God has become a thief in you,
that s all.
Between the thief and the God there must be a bridge,
otherwise how can you exist?
And you have been existing beautifully.
So there must be a way
– it has to be found,
that’s all.
Nobody is rejected,
and for everybody there is every possibility to grow.
You have to find out your type;
and if you cannot find out your type,
that too is not to be made into a worry.
That means you can do a synthetic technique of meditation,
in which body, heart and mind are all involved.
But start feeling, being.
Start on the way.
Don’t go on just listening
because that can be an addiction;
you can enjoy it,
and forget about it.
Then words which would have become a transformation will only become a little information.
The third question:
Question 3
YOU HAVE SAID THAT WE SHOULD SURRENDER TO YOU.
IS THIS A DEVICE TO KEEP US FROM ’PUSHING THE RIVER’?
COULD WE SURRENDER TO A ROCK, A TREE OR A FLOWER AND GET THE SAME RESULT?
OR IS THERE SOMETHING DIFFERENT IN SURRENDERING TO AN ENLIGHTENED ONE?
There is none.
Surrender is the key,
not to whom or what you surrender.
That is irrelevant.
Surrender to a rock.
Of course it will be difficult.
If you cannot surrender to a Buddha
it will be very difficult to surrender to a rock.
So don’t try to deceive yourself,
that’s all.
If you can surrender to a rock
– absolutely perfect.
Because wherever you surrender,
suddenly by your surrender you discover the Buddha there.
The rock becomes a Buddha.
That’s how rocks have been worshipped for centuries.
Stone images have been worshipped for centuries.
In Mecca they have worshipped a rock;
no other rock as been kissed so much.
Millions and millions of people with deep love have touched the KA’BAH, the rock in Mecca.
This is one of the greatest temples on earth;
no temple can compete.
But that rock is rock only to you,
not to a Mohammedan.
To a Mohammedan in that rock is represented all that is divine.
When you surrender to something,
that something becomes a Buddha.
But it will be difficult to surrender to a rock.
In a way it will seem easy to surrender
because a rock is just a rock,
you can play with it,
whenever you want you can surrender,
and whenever you don’t want you can throw it out.
Or your ego may not be hurt by surrendering to a rock,
because a rock is just dead,
you can do whatsoever you like to do with the rock.
If you surrender to an enlightened being it is going to be very difficult because
– what is happening?
One of the greatest and the most impossible things is happening
– the ego is surrendering to a non-ego.
Very difficult.
The ego can even surrender to another ego;
it is not very difficult
because they belong to the same plane
and to the same dimension,
and their arithmetic is the same.
But to surrender to a non-ego – very difficult.
But as far as I am concerned,
surrender is the key.
Surrender wherever you can.
And if you surrender,
in that surrendering your ego disappears.
And that is the point!
It is only a device;
when I say to you:
Surrender to me.
it is not a question of surrendering to me.
In fact there is nobody who can be really pointed to and said to be me.
When I tell you:
Surrender to me,
I am simply telling you to surrender.
Do it wherever you can,
and the same will be the result;
because the result is not related to the object,
the result is related to your surrendering.
The quality of surrendering changes you.
The fourth question:
Question 4
DO YOU ENJOY THE BIRDS DURING THE DISCOURSE?
DO THE BIRDS ENJOY YOU?
Of course I enjoy them,
and they also enjoy me
– but not the discourse.
Because they are not so foolish.
To enjoy a discourse human stupidity is needed.
They enjoy me, I enjoy them.
But discourse is irrelevant to them.
Just a noise.
And that too not very musical.
They know better.
They do better.
Only human beings are addicted to words.
If I become silent the birds won’t leave me
– you will leave me.
In fact if I become silent
and you leave me,
more birds will be coming.
Because of you,
the place is so crowded.
The fifth question:
Question 5
I USED TO COME OUT OF THE MORNING DISCOURSES FEELING INSPIRED AND INVIGORATED.
NOW I AM USUALLY DRAINED.
I WANT TO BE ALONE AND I GO HOME AND SLEEP FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS.
WHY IS THIS?
You must have been using the discourses as drugs.
Otherwise why should you feel inspired and invigorated?
You must have used them as props, drugs, activizers.
I am not trying to inspire you here,
because all inspiration,
if it is really inspiration,
should come from your innermost core.
How can it from the outside?
How can you say that you are inspired by somebody?
The whole thing looks contradictory.
Inspiration cannot come from outside,
otherwise it won’t be inspiration.
Inspiration has to bubble in your being.
If is comes from the outside then it is a drug.
Then it is not happening to you,
but as it happens with all drugs,
soon you will get addicted to it
– then it won’t affect you.
Then more doses will be needed.
And then the same drug which used to inspire you in the beginning,
and give energy to you,
will prove a drainage on your energy.
Don’t use my talks as drugs.
There is no need to get inspired,
all that is needed is to become more alert.
Listening to me
you should become more and more alert, aware.
If you don’t become alert and aware,
then in the beginning,
for a few days,
everything will be beautiful
– the honeymoon period:
and then, then you KNOW it.
Then by and by you start feeling drained.
You go to look at a movie.
Next day, see the same movie;
again the third day
– and you will be drained.
The first day you were so inspired
and you had felt so good,
so full of energy,
next day you know it is the same;
the third day
– now it has become a boredom.
Whatsoever I say,
though the words differ,
I go on saying the same thing every day.
If you are not becoming alert soon you will be drained of your energy.
My energy is the same.
Use it as a jumping board,
don’t use it as an intoxicant.
Use me to become yourself.
Don’t become dependent on me,
otherwise this will happen.
This has always been happening to Buddha, to Mahavir, to Lao Tzu 老子;
this has always been a problem.
When people come,
in the beginning their desire is burning,
their ambition is high.
They think:
Now something is going to happen.
Then they listen,
and then they become greedy,
but then they feel,by and by,
that nothing is happening;
they go on listening
and nothing is happening;
they go on listening and accumulating information
and nothing is happening.
Then they become dull.
Then the honeymoon period is over.
Now, the dull marriage life settles;
the same wife,
the same husband,
the same MASTER,
the same disciple
– things settle.
But remember,
when things settle only then real things start.
Honeymoon is not a true picture of a relationship.
Too exaggerated.
Don’t believe in it.
Let a few weeks pass,
and then if there is love,
real relationship will start
– with the humdrum life,
with ordinary things,
and with the same person every day.
If love is there then intimacy will grow;
if love is not there – excitement gone;
honeymoon over;
marriage finished.
In fact, the honeymoon is not even over and people start thinking of divorcing.
They may not divorce
– that is another thing,
but deep inside,
when the newness is lust,
excitement is gone,
you start feeling:
Now what is there?
Real love is known only after the honeymoon.
When you come to me,
in the beginning you are enchanted
– with the new; inspired excited –
something is going to happen.
And when you remain there for a long period,
every day listening to me,
and things settle,
then only real disciplehood starts.
Then there is no excitement,
and then only, intimacy grows.
But that intimacy will grow only if you become aware.
Between you and me,
awareness has to flow.
Otherwise soon you will start feeling sleepy, drained,
you will start leaving, going to somebody else,
to another guru,
to some other ashram
– and there again the same cycle will start:
you will be excited in the beginning,
then dull.
I know, many of you have been to many other gurus before,
I am not the first.
There are people who have been to at least ten gurus.
They have roamed all over the world.
They have been with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,
they have been with Prabhupada,
they have been with Gurdjieff groups,
they have been in Arica, with Oscar,
they have been in many encounter groups, growth groups, EST,
and thousands of things
– they have tried everything.
Now they have come to me.
You can repeat the same cycle again.
You can move in a vicious circle.
Now when you come to me,
drop out of the old pattern;
otherwise you can go on and on
– and for many lives you must have been going on this way.
Drop it!
Excitement is not the thing, intimacy is.
Honeymoon is useless.
The real thing is to settle.
Grow in awareness!
I am not trying to inspire you,
because all inspiration is foolish.
People who inspire others are trying to force them towards some ideals.
I am not trying to force you towards any ideal.
I am not trying to make you into something else that you are not.
What is this question of inspiration?
And I am not going to sacrifice you to anything.
I am not going to make you martyrs.
I am not a politician!
You are the goal to me.
You have to discover yourself, that’s all,
you are not to be something else!
You have just to become more alert.
So if you are related to me by excitement,
this relationship is not going to be very long.
Sooner or later you will drop out of it.
I USED TO COME OUT OF THE MORNING DISCOURSES FEELING INSPIRED AND INVIGORATED. NOW I AM USUALLY DRAINED.
It is good that now you are drained.
You were doing something wrong.
I am not a drug,
you were using me like a drug.
Now don’t use me like a drug
and soon you will see that the feeling of being drained has disappeared.
Use me as a jumping board towards a higher and higher awareness.
I am not saying something to you,
I am BEING something to you.
Don’t listen to my words,
they are just playthings.
Listen to me in deep silence,
in deep awareness.
Be related to me.
And let this relationship not be an ordinary master-disciple relationship,
because that you have done many times.
This time let it be really authentic,
not of excitement,
but of intimacy, of deep love.
Soon the feeling of being drained will disappear.
And you will not be inspired,
you will not feel invigorated,
you will feel just yourself.
Exactly as you are.
You should not feel more than life size,
because how can one go on feeling that?
Some day one has to come back to life size.
You should feel just like you are.
The sixth question:
Question 6
I OFTEN FANTASIZE ABOUT YOU.
I IMAGINE TALKING WITH YOU, GOING FOR A WALK, HAVING TEA, AND OTHER SITUATIONS.
IT GIVES ME A FEELING OF CLOSENESS TO YOU AND IT IS COMFORTING.
BUT SOMETIMES I WORRY:
MAYBE I’M JUST STRENGTHENING ANOTHER DREAM AND SHOULDN’T INDULGE.
SHOULD I VIEW THESE IMAGES AS JUST MORE IDLE DREAMS OR CAN THEY BE HELPFUL IN FEELING MY CONNECTION TO YOU?
No, they cannot be helpful.
In fact they will never allow you to be related to me.
Because your dream will always be between me and you.
Drop all these fantasies.
Don’t indulge in them.
Because imagination can become very dangerous.
I come across it every day.
One sannyasin from the Himalayas was here in the ashram.
She told me that I have told her in her dreams that she has to stay here and not to go home.
I tried to explain to her that I have not told anything to her in her dream,
but she won’t listen to me.
He dreams are more real than me.
She won’t listen!
She said:
No. I know that you have told me.
I say to her that I have not told her,
but I am far away
– her own dream is nearer to her.
She was here for three, four months,
then one day she came and she said:
Now you have told me to go
– back home.
I said again,
I have not told anything to you,
there is no need to go,
now be here!
But she wouldn’t listen.
She left.
She came again;
now this time she is completely mad,
there is no possibility of communication with her.
Impossible,
because her own dreams have become so real that I am very far away
– she cannot listen to me.
And she goes on saying that whatsoever she is doing she is doing according to me.
So don’t allow such fantasies from the very beginning,
they are dangerous.
If you go for a walk with me,
the danger is that when you come to see me the dream also will be coming with you.
And if you have been too much with me in your dreams,
by and by that dream will be between me and you will become a hindrance, an obstacle.
It will be impossible to relate, you can go mad.
Drop it immediately.
Don’t indulge in it, that is dangerous.
While I am here there is no need to indulge in such dreams.
Why not look at me?
But mind is very tricky,
because if you look at me you will have to change.
But in your dream whatsoever you want me to tell you,
only that I can tell you,
not anything else.
I am not free in your dream.
Remember always,
that whether a dream is in the night or in the day,
in your dream you are the dreamer,
you are the dream.
If you dream in your dream that you are moving in a car, fast;
another car is coming;
there are hills and mountains;
and there is an accident;
remember,
you are the dreamer,
you are the man sitting in the car,
you are the car,
you are the road,
you are the hills,
you are the other car coming,
and you are the accident,
because there is nobody else expect you.
Your whole dream is you.
Don’t indulge in dreams.
I am here to help you come out of your sleep.
And if you create dreams you will move deeper into sleep,
because every dream needs sleep.
Dream cannot happen without the quality of sleep around you.
So the more you live in dreams
the more a sleepiness will surround you.
It will become your aura.
You will be moving on the road with open eyes
but deep down you are completely asleep,
utterly asleep in your dream.
That has to be broken.
The dream has to be shattered.
The quality of sleep has to be changed.
You have to become alert and aware.
The seventh question:
Question 7
WOULD YOU TELL US ABOUT THE NAME YOU GIVE TO US?
DOES IT MEAN OUR BECOMING?
OR OUR INNER NATURE?
SHOULD WE BE IDENTIFIED WITH IT?
OR IS IT JUST A JOKE?
It is just a joke.
Don’t get identified with it,
because you are the nameLESS.
You have no name.
You don’t have any identity.
I give you a new name so that the old is broken,
but remember the new name is also a name,
and soon it will become old.
So don’t get identified with it.
Use it as label
– it is needed,
it has some utility,
but don’t become too much identified with it.
You are not the name.
The name is needed,
it has a social function,
but no inner reality.
Remain nameless.
The last question:
Question 8
HOW CAN I DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE WHOLE MOVING THROUGH ME AS A PART AND ME MOVING SEPARATELY AS A PART?
There will be no difficulty.
When the whole moves through you,
you will not be there.
There will be no need to make any distinction
– you will not be there.
You will be a vast emptiness.
But when you are there,
then you are moving as a separate unit.
When the whole moves in you,
you are not there.
If you are there,
remember that the whole is not moving in you,
you are moving against the whole.
You are fighting the whole, resisting.
You can feel yourself only when you are moving upcurrent.
If you move with the river
you cannot feel yourself.
You will feel the river,
but not yourself.
And sooner or later you will become the river.
Enough for today.
about subtle body and chakra
yoga : the alpha and the omega, vol 9 ch1
osho transformation tarot “the foolish heart”
If you would like to read more about this card, click here.
Continue to Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4 chapter 9 : Nothing weaker than water…
from osho talks
Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4
Talks on Fragments from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching.
Lao Tzu 老子 : Tao Te Ching 道徳経
Originally the ”Three Treasures” series was published as two volumes, later republished as four volumes.
Talks given from 23/08/75 am to 31/08/75 am
English Discourse series
chapter 8 : It is just a joke
30 August 1975 am in Buddha Hall
The free downloading of all chapters of this osho discourse from OSHO WORLD,
please click here.
beloved osho
beloved lao tzu
beloved all enlightened masters
beloved all
”The last word of Buddha was, sammasati.
Remember that you are a buddha – sammasati.”
sammasati
It means right remembrance.
meditation & love
osho samadhi
