Just be

Maneesha...

What is, is.

It is never different.

Its forms differ but its being remains the same.

To live in the forms is to live in illusions.

To see the being is to transcend the world.

Only seeing is needed.

What you are going to see is already there - has been there since eternity... waiting and waiting and waiting....

This is my comment.

Chimon is one of the greatest masters....

There ends the dialogue - it seems the monk has understood.

Chimon has made an existential statement. Even in the seed the lotus flower is a lotus flower. You cannot see it but its being does not depend on your seeing. If it was dependent on your seeing, then certainly the seed cannot be called the lotus flower, it will be a lotus flower only when floating on the water with open leaves, dancing in the sun.

But that which floats on the water, if it is not hidden in the seed, from where can it come? In the seed it was invisible to our eyes. Our eyes have their limitations; our eyes could see it only when it started floating on the water. That is our limitation; it is not a change as far as the lotus flower is concerned.

Just a few days ago, in France a woman gave birth to a child.... The doctors could not believe it; they were expecting something strange, but not what actually happened. The woman was a scientist working in an atomic plant... for nine months the child was exposed to radiation. The doctors were aware that something strange was going to happen, and something strange happened: the child was born with X-ray eyes; the child could see through your skin into your skeleton. That makes an important discovery, that eyes can be changed into X-ray mechanisms. Then you can see things which are hidden, then you can see things which are not available to other people's eyes.

In the Soviet Union a certain photographer has developed a new kind of photography, Kirlian - that is his name - using very sensitive films. He can see the lotus flower in the seed. You give him the seed and his camera will give you the photograph of a lotus flower. Wait for six months, and then, when the lotus flower comes within the limits of visibility, you will be surprised. The photograph will be exactly the same as the actual lotus flower. The sensitive film, the sensitive lenses, could see what we are not able to see.

It simply means that our senses have a limitation, but existence has no limitations. If we could see the whole with all its implications, then the child will also show you the young man he is going to be, the old man that he is going to be... the sicknesses, the health, the intelligence, the death. In a single flash you will be able to see the whole biography of the child.

But perhaps it is good that we cannot see that much. To see that much will be very confusing. A man is passing and you see a child passing, a young man passing, an old man passing - and he is dead and on the funeral pyre. It will be so quick that you will not be able to decide what is happening.

In a single split moment everything has happened. Life will become impossible.

But meditation gives a clarity and a different way of seeing. The lotus flower is a lotus flower in all its forms: when it is a seed, when it is a bud, when it is a flower.

And again it will disappear from your vision....

The petals will go away.

There will be no lotus flower.

Again the pond is empty as it was before.

The lotus flower happened just like a small dream... a glimpse.

That's what Bodhidharma insisted: Emptiness.

Everything comes out of it and everything returns to it, and there is nothing holy because there is nothing unholy. This is not knowledge, conceptual knowledge, this is existential experience; hence, Bodhidharma could say, "No knowing." He is describing himself as no knowing. He is saying, "I am just a mirror. Things come before me, reflect within me, disappear. I remain as empty as ever" - just like the mirror.

Have you ever thought that the mirror is empty, utterly empty? It is because of its emptiness that it is possible for it to reflect anything that comes in front of it. The moment the thing has gone out of the area of the mirror, the mirror is again empty; in fact, even when it was reflecting there was no doing on its part. It is just the nature of the mirror to reflect. It was simply functioning in its nature.

Chimon's statement is absolute, unconditional, categorical. It contains the whole philosophy of existence: No beginning, no end, everything just is.

Just listen to the clouds.... A moment before they were not there and suddenly they are - and they are going. But existentially they are always: sometimes manifest, sometimes unmanifest.

Chimon needs no commentary, but Setcho is bound to comment. He says:

It is not a question of kindness. What else can he say? He is simply reflecting the truth. Do you think when a mirror reflects your face it is kind, compassionate? It is simply its nature, the nature of enlightenment that it becomes reflective of reality.

But Setcho - as I have told you - is a schoolmaster! Once in a while, perhaps accidentally, he makes some good statement, but otherwise he is a knowledgeable, confused man.

Without any reason or rhyme, he is bringing in Master Wang and criticizing him. Wang is a different type of master, certainly, but he is not wrong, he is simply different. He has a more philosophical approach to reality. His experience is that of a mystic, but his expression is that of a philosopher.

But this is no time or place to bring his name. This shows that Setcho cannot see the difference between the personalities of the masters. Chimon is a simple man; he simply says what he sees.

Wang is a different kind of master. He also says what he sees, but he is far more sophisticated. He brings more conceptual knowledge to express his experience.

Setcho, although making the commentary, does not know what he is saying. Chimon and Wang are two forms of the same lotus: one is a simple villager, the other is very cultured, sophisticated, a philosopher.

If he cannot understand this, how can he understand:

What he is saying is true, but he is saying it without knowing, without understanding its implications.

And he exposes himself immediately the moment he starts criticizing Master Wang. What difference whether you say it directly or in a roundabout way? The lotus flower is the lotus flower - seen by a simple man or by a philosopher, seen by a simple villager or by a great painter. Certainly their visions will be different, but what they are seeing is the same lotus flower.

Question 1:

Maneesha, you are asking:

No, Maneesha, a lotus flower is a lotus flower. Whether you see it or not, whether it is in the seed or floating in the water, it is simply the change of the form. But the essence - and we are calling the lotus flower the essence - is not its particular expression.

You are asleep or you are awake.... Spiritually you are still asleep; perhaps one day you will become spiritually awake too. But all the time it is you - awake or asleep, enlightened or unenlightened. The lotus flower is the lotus flower.

Question 2:

Your second question is:

There is no question of the individual's responsibility. The very idea of individual responsibility will postpone what is going to happen anyway. Why has it not happened up to now? Why is it not happening? If it is inevitable you don't have to do anything: it is going to happen. All that you can think of doing is to wait with love, trust - in silence - and the guest will come. You cannot manage the guest to come; you can only be just an available host: no responsibility, just a pure awaiting....

That's why I have not given you any discipline, I have not asked you to do this or that. I have only wanted you to understand the fact that enlightenment is your nature, so there is no need to run here and there trying to find where enlightenment is.

Just relax in your silence, in your laughter.

Let your laughter and silence become one.

The moment laughter and silence become one, you create a great alchemical change within you. A dance arises in every fiber of your being, a light, a bliss, a certainty that you have come home.

The word 'responsibility' is a little heavy. And whenever people tell you "this is your responsibility"

they make you feel guilty, they make you feel burdened. I cannot do that. I want you to be absolutely unburdened, unloaded.

Just be.

Don't run after being, because you are already there, where any Buddha has reached. It was his choice to go on a long route of six years and then to come home, tired. And because he was tired he relaxed. He could have relaxed without doing all that he had been doing. The day he relaxed, he became enlightened.

It is only a question of recognition, not responsibility. Even this moment there is no one here who is not a buddha, no one here who is not a lotus flower. Yes, a few are asleep, a few are in the seed, a few are floating in the water, but it does not make any difference. Don't make it hardship; let it remain as light as possible.

My contribution to the religious growth of humanity is that you don't have to do anything, you have just to be at your center - utterly relaxed, no desire, no longing, nowhere to go. Just being here - and the explosion, and the lotus flower.

Question 3:

Your third question, Maneesha:

None at all.

An open heart, a loving heart, a deep trust in oneself and nothing else is needed. You don't have to surrender to some master, you don't have to worship some God, you don't have to do some prayer to some hypothetical deity. You don't have to go to man-made temples and churches to find that which is hidden within you.

A disciple is the seed of a master. The disciple is also a lotus flower, it is just that you are looking somewhere else and not within yourself.

Let us laugh a little.... The silence should not become heavy, it should not have weight. Unless your silence learns to dance it becomes a heavy weight.

A flea rushes into the pub just before closing time, orders three large whiskeys, drinks them straight down, rushes out into the street, leaps high into the air and falls flat on his face.

The flea picks himself up shakily and looks all around, "Damn it," he says, "someone has moved my dog!"

Hannibal Hayne is in Doctor Feelgood's office for his annual checkup.

"You won't live out the week," says the doctor, "if you don't stop running around after women."

"But Doc, there is nothing the matter with me," says Hannibal, pounding his chest with his fist, "I am in great physical shape."

"Yes, I know," replies Doctor Feelgood, "but one of the women is my wife."

Fagin Finkelstein, the lawyer, is engaged to defend a man in court on a rape charge. A huge black woman is testifying that she woke up one morning to discover that she had been raped and that the accused was lying beside her.

"Now, madam, it is very hard to take your story seriously," sniggers Fagin. "Suppose, for instance, you had woken in the morning and found me lying beside you. What would you think?"

The woman looks Fagin up and down slowly and then remarks, "I would think I had a miscarriage."

Pitkin, the absent-minded professor and his family are moving house. Mrs. Pitkin knows how forgetful her husband can be and writes the new address on several pieces of paper, putting one in each pocket of the professor's clothes.

Somehow during the day Professor Pitkin manages to write notes on each piece of paper and then give them away to his students.

In the evening when he drives to the old house, he remembers that he has moved, but has no idea where to. Then he sees some children playing in the street and walks over to them.

"Hey, little girl," he calls out, "Can you tell me where the Pitkins have moved to?"

"Sure," replies the girl. "It is just around the corner and three houses along - Daddy!"

Now, two minutes for absolute silence.

Be still, no moving.

Gather your energy inside just as a lotus flower closes its petals....

Now, relax.

Okay, come back.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.