The voice of the raindrops

Maneesha, the sound of raindrops is not there today but the sound of the bamboos is filling the whole being of this assembly. It is the same.

It does not matter whether it is the sound of running water or the crackling of bamboos - if you are silent, you are not; only the sound of the bamboos fills the whole sphere.

What else remains? - just a pure awareness.

You cannot identify this awareness with yourself. It is transcendental to you, it is higher than you, it is bigger than you. It is your intrinsic treasure, but the lotus is still in the seed.

This anecdote very beautifully makes the point, never mentioning the word 'awareness'. There are reasons not to mention the word. Because of your old habit of the mind, you immediately grab on to anything - awareness, consciousness, witnessing - and immediately you think, "It is me."

Ordinarily, if you had come across such an anecdote, you would have passed without paying any attention to its meaning and significance. Who cares what is the noise outside? It may be the raindrops, it may be birds singing, it may be bamboos dancing in the wind.

Kyosei is asking, WHAT IS THE NOISE OUTSIDE?

The question has a great implication. You can answer it if you are inside, otherwise who will answer?

"What is the noise outside?" can be answered only by a consciousness within. If you are asleep you cannot answer, "What is the noise outside?" If you are unconscious you cannot answer, "What is the noise outside?"

Kyosei is not really interested in the noise outside, he is interested in: "Are you in? Are you aware?"

But the monk missed, because he said, THAT IS THE VOICE OF THE RAINDROPS.

Kyosei is not asking anything about the objective world, the outside world, although the question appears to be so. If the monk had remained silent, allowing the raindrops to create the sound, or the bamboos...

In this moment, except your silence there is no answer. Silence is the answer. The moment you speak even a single word you have missed.

KYOSEI SAID,

Kyosei has not taken note, has not paid attention to the monk's answer that it is the voice of the raindrops. Instead he says, MEN'S THINKING IS TOPSY-TURVY. In this small sentence there is hidden a great secret. Perhaps you may not have ever thought about YOU....

If in this hall there were nobody, do you think the bamboos would still be making noise? Without you, for whom will they make the noise? Noise needs somebody to hear it. If there is nobody to hear it, there is no noise. When everybody has gone in the middle of the night, the bamboos may try hard, but they cannot make the noise because there are no ears! But even if there are ears and the mind is full of thoughts, the poor bamboos will not be heard.

You are needed and you are needed in such a way as if you are not. Your presence is needed; your personality is not needed. You are needed - your mind is not needed. Then there is a simple awareness of the rain falling, or the water running, or the wind passing through the pine trees, or the bamboos saying UPANISHADAS.

Do you see, in this silence the clouds fill you with immense gratitude; their joy becomes contagious.

The fresh breeze comes, touches you and gives a dance to every fiber of your being.

... And the rain has come.

The bamboos crying for it has not been in vain.

Kyosei wanted you; his audience the monk was a poor fellow. He could not understand that it is not the rain and its sound that is important; what is important is your awareness. The monk must have been a little stupid. Instead of understanding what Kyosei has said, that your mind is topsy-turvy, he asked, WHAT ABOUT YOURSELF?

Kyosei was certainly compassionate... otherwise it was time to get rid of the monk. He said, I WAS NEAR IT BUT I AM NOT DELUDED.

This is a very subtle answer. He is not saying, "I am aware of it." He is saying, "I am very close to awareness, but I am not deluded; I will not say that I am aware"... because the moment you make static statements you start going wrong. Life is a continuous flow; so is awareness, so is the whole existence. You cannot use the word, which makes it static - and language is very dead; it consists only of dead words.

Hence Kyosei said, "I WAS NEAR IT, I was just coming closer, but I was not identified even with my awareness. I would not say that I was aware. I can only say, slowly I was becoming aware of it."

It is a delicate point, because Gautam Buddha - who is the source of Zen Buddhism - does not believe that even for a single moment anything is unchanging.

A man asked Gautam Buddha a question one day - just in the morning - and Buddha answered.

But the man could not understand the answer, so in the evening he asked again. Buddha answered again. The man was amazed, because in the morning it had been something else.

Buddha said, "Of course. It was morning and now it is evening, the sun is setting. I am flowing with life and with my flowing my answers will be changing. I cannot give you a static dogma."

Any authentic man of experience is never dogmatic. He cannot say that it is absolutely so because even while you are saying it, it may have changed.

One day you will become old - it is difficult to say which will be the day, but certainly it must be one of the seven days. A few people become old on Monday, a few people choose Sunday... but everybody at some point of time becomes old.

But remember, you cannot simply jump from youth to old age. It is not possible that on Sunday you are young, and early in the morning on Monday you find you have become old. You are becoming old every moment; every moment the flow of life is taking you towards old age, towards death, and towards beyond-death.

How can we say what is the truth?

KYOSEI SAID, "I WAS NEAR IT." In fact one is always coming closer and closer and closer. One never really comes, one goes on coming like waves of the ocean. One wave upon another wave, they go on coming. And they have been coming for millions of years and they have not reached anywhere; they still go on coming. Their life span is not very big, only a few million years; your life span is infinite, from eternity to eternity you are coming, moment to moment, closer and closer.

And this is the beauty of life, that you are always coming closer to it, but you never come to a full stop; the full stop will really mean death. What will you do then?

Have you ever thought about it? If you become realized, enlightened, awakened, then... back to the kitchen, looking into the refrigerator! What are you going to do after that?

Enlightenment cannot be the full point. Buddha had no possibility to open a refrigerator, but in his own old-fashioned way, he immediately starts with his begging bowl - that is not different, just an old version. After enlightenment comes the begging bowl, and he is moving on from house to house.

Today it will be different. You become enlightened. You wait a few minutes in Buddha Hall, waiting and thinking, What to do now? And then you start moving towards the restaurant - in a queue...

enlightened people!

It is so hilarious but so human. What else to do?

A few go a little earlier to be just in the front of the line; a few are more patient, a few stay even for hours... but it does not matter, finally you have to go to the restaurant.

Life goes on whether you are enlightened or not.

Kyosei says, "I was near it, very near it. I had almost found it but I will not be deluded, I will not be identified. I will not say, 'I have found it.' I will only say, 'Almost.'"

It was Gautam Buddha's common habit to start his sentences with "Perhaps." Certainty is only for the idiots. For those who even come close to truth everything becomes flexible, everything becomes "Perhaps..."

He says, "It may be easy if you are ready to commit a small linguistic mistake. You can say, 'I have attained,' but in the true world of transformation it is difficult. You can only say, 'I have come very close, almost to the point of declaring,' but there one stops."

And it is better from there to go to the restaurant. Rather than first becoming enlightened and then going to the restaurant... it doesn't look right...!

Once in a while this schoolmaster, Setcho, also manages to say some significant things.

THE EMPTY HALL... This hall can be said to be empty if you are silent. It is not your being here that disturbs its emptiness, it is your chattering mind that disturbs its emptiness. If the mind is at ease then it resounds only with the raindrops or the bamboos or the clouds, but the hall is empty.

There are questions which can be answered only by not answering. If somebody asks you, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" you will be shocked for a moment because whatever you say will have some implications. If you say, "Yes, I have stopped," that means you have been beating. If you say "No" that means you are still beating.

One very intelligent philosopher and logician, seeing such situations has developed a word, 'po'.

When you cannot say yes and you cannot say no, say po. Po means nothing; po means it is not answerable. Po is a new contribution to language. Perhaps rather than po you would like - because it reminds you about the pope and Poland... You can use Yaa-Hoo! That is specially yours.

And there are idiots who have started writing articles against Yaa-Hoo - quoting Sushrut, an ancient man of medicine - talking about ayurveda, just creating jargon, that this word, 'Yaa-Hoo' will destroy people's minds, will break down their nervous systems.

I have told my doctors - we have many experts in everything - to give good hits to these two idiots.

In the first place neither has Sushrut mentioned "Yaa-Hoo" anywhere nor is it mentioned in any ayurvedic scripture. They are just throwing big names around.

The reality is that scientific research in the Soviet Union and in America both support that laughing and crying are immensely healthy, healing and refreshing processes. On scientific grounds from many experiments it has been found that if you start laughing, your whole being vibrates with healing energy. It is still a mystery why it happens, but the same happens with crying.

Everybody knows from his own experience that after laughter, good laughter, a belly laugh, you almost feel that you have taken an ice-cold shower; a peace, a silence, a freshness...

The same is true about crying, but very few people know the secret of crying because it is more repressed than laughter.

Both these people who have written articles - and just today I have seen them - are ayurvedic physicians. It is absolutely certain that they understand that if by laughter people can heal themselves, if by crying people can heal themselves, it goes against their profession. It is not a coincidence that only two vaidyas, ayurvedic physicians, should write the article - and without any experimentation. They should come here and participate in the groups.

They must have been afraid that this would be my response, so in their article they say, "We would like to be observers, but not participants."

If you are just an observer and don't take the medicine yourself, how are you going to know what the medicine does? If you yourself are not laughing, how are you going to know what ripples of health, well-being are created by it? But they must be afraid: if you cooperate and you feel good, you cry and you feel good, and after a whole group you come out more radiant, it is going to destroy your profession. Then rather than giving medicines to people, you can send them here to be healed without any medicines.

Medicines have after-effects: they may heal one thing and they may create another process of sickness. Laughter cannot do that, and the only research done has not been done by Sushrut, has not been done by ayurvedic physicians; it has been done in the Soviet Union and in America and the experimenters agree that people should laugh more, should cry more. This will keep them younger, this will give them longer life.

But these two physicians have not even been around here to see that just the sound of Yaa-Hoo and a tremendous joyfulness, a silence spreads in the hearts of participants. Not of observers - observers are not welcome, observers will be a disturbance. When everybody else is relaxed they will be sitting like a rock amongst the relaxed people. Their very presence will be corruptive.

I will not allow anybody here to be only an observer. Real observation is within yourself: what happens when you let go, when you relax, when you laugh for no reason at all, or you cry and weep just out of a deep unburdening process - which has been triggered by the word 'Yaa-Hoo'. And when I have used this word, I have not used this word without going through it and all its implications.

So I won't allow any idiot to criticize it without experiment. He can do the experiment in his own home. All the ayurvedic physicians can get together and cry if they cannot come here - that would be better - and if it destroys the mind, so far so good.

Setcho says,

Not that the master cannot answer, but because only silence is the answer.

Jesus is standing before the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate. Pontius Pilate feels sorry for this young man. He is only thirty-three, has not seen much of life, has not committed any crime.

Crucifying him seems to be absolutely unjust, but the whole crowd, the mass is asking that this young man should be crucified "because he is corrupting the minds of our people."

This is an ancient blame, placed on anybody who brings any insight into life. Howsoever small an insight - to change, to bring the new in, to open new doors, new mysteries, and immediately the guardians of the old are ready to destroy the person.

Pontius Pilate was a very cultured man, and being a Roman he was not part of the crowd of the Jews; he was a foreigner, he had no interest in crucifying this young man. He came close to Jesus and asked him, "I know you are innocent and I know the crowd is simply mad, prejudiced; you have in some way offended these people. I have heard many times, particularly my wife has heard you speaking here and there, and she has reported to me. I always wanted to ask, what is this truth that you talk about? Just tell me, what is truth?"

And Jesus looked into the eyes of Pontius Pilate without answering.

You can say without answering, or you can say he was answering with his silent eyes.

Truth is a silent experience.

There is no way to bring it into language.

So when Setcho says, EVEN A MASTER FAILS TO ANSWER, it does not mean that the master is ignorant, it simply means the master knows that any answer will destroy itself, will itself commit suicide itself. There are questions which are fundamental; they can be answered only by not answering them.

A real master will simply sit silently, listening to the wind coming from the mountains, listening to these bamboos chitchatting amongst themselves.

Setcho is right.

Question 1:

Maneesha has asked:

Maneesha, if you meet Setcho somewhere, some day... and it is almost possible. In eternity we come across the same people again and again; there are not many more people, they just come with changed faces, sometimes growing a beard, sometimes shaved...

If you meet Setcho, certainly say what you are saying: "An empty hall resounding with the voice of raindrops is our master's answer." It is not only your master's answer, it is the answer.

Question 2:

Her second question is:

Listen to the bamboos....

(OSHO WAITS FOR THE BAMBOOS, BUT AT THIS MOMENT THEY SING VERY QUIETLY.)

These bamboos are mischievous fellows! When you are ready to listen to them, they become silent.

And when nobody is listening they are telling great truths.

(THE BAMBOOS ANSWER - VERY LOUDLY!)

Perfectly good!

Question 3:

Her third question is:

Maneesha, when one disappears, leaving behind only a pure consciousness, then raindrops or no raindrops, then bamboos or no bamboos, just a pure awareness of whatever goes on around is certainly my milieu - and I want it to be your milieu too.

The very air, your very presence should be a constant silence, because only in this silence blossom all kinds of roses.

Now something particularly for the bamboos; a few of them are bananas...

A man and his dog are watching a movie. The dog barks for the hero, growls at the villain, and howls during the sad parts.

A man in the next seat leans over, "That's amazing!" he says to the dog's owner, "Your dog really seems to be enjoying the movie!"

"It is amazing," says the owner, "he hated the book!"

Hymie and Becky are celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary by going to see a movie. It is a hot, steaming, passionate film, and it arouses the animal instincts in Becky. When they get home that night, she snuggles up close to Hymie, but he ignores her.

"Why is it," cries Becky, "that you never make love to me like that hero in the movie?"

"Don't be stupid," snaps Hymie. "Do you know how much they pay those guys for doing it?!"

Mother Superior is talking to three teenage girls who are about to leave her orphanage.

"You are going into a wicked world!" she says. "Men will try to take advantage of you. They will buy you drinks, take you to their apartments, and do terrible things to you. Then they will give you twenty dollars and kick you out!"

"Excuse me, Holy Mother," says one of the teenagers, "but do you mean these men will take advantage of us and give us money?"

"Yes, my child," sighs the nun. "Why do you ask?"

"Well," replies the girl, "the priests only give us candy."

Kowalski wants to go moose hunting in the wilds of Canada. So he arrives at a small trading post to buy some equipment.

The storekeeper advises Kowalski to hire Bruno, the greatest moose-caller in the country.

"It is true," says the storekeeper, "that Bruno is expensive, but he has a sexy quality in his voice that a moose finds irresistible!"

"What does he do?" asks Kowalski.

"Well," explains the storekeeper, "Bruno will make his first call when the moose is five hundred meters away. When the moose hears it, he will be filled with desire and approach to two hundred meters.

"Then Bruno will call again, only this time, he will make it more suggestive. The moose will rush closer, and then Bruno will make his sexiest call. The moose will become inflamed with carnal desire and come to a point just a few meters away.

"And that is the time, my friend, when you shoot!"

"Suppose I miss?" says Kowalski.

"Ah," sighs the storekeeper, "that would be a catastrophe!"

"But why?" asks Kowalski.

"Well," replies the storekeeper, "then Bruno gets screwed!"

Now, two minutes of silence.

Close your eyes, be absolutely frozen, contain your energy within yourself....

Now relax.

Okay, come back.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.