Gutei's Finger

This is a very strange story, and there is every possibility that you will misunderstand it, because the most difficult thing to understand in life is the behavior of an enlightened person.

You have your own values, and you always look through those values. An enlightened person is in a totally different dimension, where he lives without values, where he lives without any criteria, where he lives without any morality, where he simply lives without the ego, because all values belong to the ego. An enlightened person simply lives. He is not manipulating his life, he is a white cloud floating.

He has nowhere to go, nothing to achieve. Nothing is good for him and nothing is bad. He does not know any God, he does not know any Devil. He knows only life, and life in its totality is beautiful.

God is also ugly because it is a part, not the whole. The Devil is also ugly because that too is again a part and not the whole. God is not alive, the Devil is also dead, because life exists as a rhythm between the two - the good and the bad, God and the Devil. Life exists between these two poles.

Life cannot exist with one polarity. These are the two banks between which the river of life flows.

An enlightened person has come to know this. He is neither against anything nor for anything. He responds moment to moment, without any judgment on his part. That's why it is very difficult. An enlightened person always appears more or less like a madman. So the first thing to be understood is: don't evaluate an enlightened person through your values - very difficult, because what else can you do?

I have heard that once a very great painter asked a doctor friend to come and look at one of the paintings he had just finished. The painter was thinking that this was the greatest creation he had ever attempted, this was the peak of his whole art. So, naturally, he wanted his doctor friend to come and look at it.

The doctor observed very minutely, looked from this side and that. Ten minutes passed. The artist became a little apprehensive, then he asked the doctor, "What is the matter? What do you think about this painting?"

The doctor said, "It appears to me double pneumonia!"

This is happening to everybody, because a doctor has his own attitudes, ways of looking at things.

He looked at the painting - he cannot look at anything except in his own fixed ways; without them he cannot look - he diagnosed. The painting doesn't need any diagnosis; he missed. The beautiful thing turned into pneumonia.

This is how mind functions. When you look at a thing, you bring in your mind to color it. Don't do that with an enlightened person, because that is not going to make any difference to the enlightened person, but you will miss the opportunity to see the beauty of it.

Second thing: an enlightened person behaves from a center, never from the periphery. You always behave from the periphery, you live on the periphery, the circumference. To you, the circumference is the most important thing. You have killed your soul and saved your body. The enlightened person can sacrifice his body, but cannot allow his soul to be lost. He is ready to die - any moment he is ready to die, that's not a problem - but he is not ready to lose his center, the very core of his being.

To an enlightened person the body is just a means. So if it is needed, then even an enlightened person will tell you to, "Leave the body, but don't leave your inner being." This is how all tapascharya, all austerity, is born. The circumference is to be sacrificed for the center. Even if the head needs to be cut - if that is going to help you, if with your head your ego can fall - an enlightened person will tell you to drop the head, to cut it off: "Don't carry this head if it helps the ego, because for nothing you are losing all."

This has to be remembered: when you live from the center, the outlook is totally different. Then nobody dies, nobody can die - death is impossible. If you live from the periphery then everybody dies, death is the final end of everybody; eternal life exists nowhere.

Krishna talking to Arjuna in the Gita is really the center talking to the periphery. Arjuna lives on the periphery: he thinks of the body, he does not know anything about the soul. And Krishna talks from the center, and he says, "Don't bother about these bodies. They have died many times and they will die many times. Death is nothing but a transformation, as if someone leaves his clothes, leaves his old house, and enters into a new house. This body is nothing, Arjuna, so don't be bothered about it.

Look within." But how can Arjuna look within others if he has not looked within himself?

Remember this: this Zen Master Gutei, he is the Krishna. He lives from the center and behaves accordingly. And this incident happens to a disciple who is on the periphery. But Gutei would not have cut your finger, remember. The disciple was worthy of it, he had earned it - only then will a master go to such an extent. To go to such an extent the disciple must have learned, must have earned it, otherwise Gutei would not go that far. Even Arjuna was not so worthy as this disciple of Gutei, because Krishna talked to him - Gutei did something.

Remember the difference. A master only comes to do certain things to you when you have earned it; otherwise he will talk to you. Doing can be only when you are ready, when the moment is so near that it cannot be missed; nothing can be said, only something can be done. Because if you speak, time is needed; if you speak, then the other has to understand it. Something has to be done immediately, instantly. A master will do something only when he sees that you are just on the brink:

now talking won't help, now he has to push you. Now you are just at the door; a single moment gone and you may miss the door, and for many lives you may not be able to come to the door again.

Life is very complex. Rarely are you near the door. And if the master says, "Look, the door is here!"

and starts explaining to you, by the time you have understood, the door is no more there. Life is constant movement. The master has to do something. Even if he thinks killing you will help, he will kill you. That's why surrender is needed.

Surrender is not easy, because surrender means saying to a master, "From now on, my life and my death are yours." Surrender means "I am ready. If you say, 'Die!' I will die. I will not ask why." If you ask why, there is no surrender, there is no trust. And in the ancient days, many people could become enlightened because they could surrender. Trust was in the very atmosphere, faith was all around, trust was flowering everywhere. You couldn't pass a day without coming across a man who was a man of trust. And the moment you saw a man of trust, you felt jealous - he was such a beautiful person.

But nowadays it has become almost impossible to come across a man of trust. That beauty has disappeared. You come across doubters, skeptics, no-sayers; they are ugly but they are all around.

And, by and by, you are also fed on doubt. From the very first day your mother gives you milk you are fed on doubt. The whole scientific device depends on doubt. You have to be skeptical, doubting; only then can science work.

Religion works in totally the opposite way. You have to be trusting, to be deeply a yes-sayer, then surrender is possible. This disciple of Gutei was a surrendered one, that's why this incident became enlightenment for him.

Now we will enter this strange story. Each word is significant.

THE ZEN MASTER GUTEI MADE A PRACTICE OF RAISING HIS FINGER WHENEVER HE EXPLAINED A QUESTION ABOUT ZEN.

Masters never do anything unnecessarily, not even raising a finger. The unnecessary has disappeared. Only the essential exists with a master. He will not do a single movement, a single gesture, if it is not essential. The nonessential exists with ignorance; then, whatsoever you do is trivial, nonessential - if you leave it, nothing is lost.

Look at your life, whatsoever you are doing - if you leave it, what is lost? Nothing is gained through it - trivial things from the morning to the evening. And then you are tired of it, then you go to sleep, and in the morning you are again ready to do the same non-essentials. It is a vicious circle, one nonessential runs into another nonessential, they are linked with each other.

But you are so afraid to look at this triviality of life that you are always keeping your back towards it, because looking at the triviality of life makes you feel so depressed, "What am I doing?" And if you see that everything you are doing is absolutely useless, your ego is lost; because the ego can feel significant only when you are doing something significant. So you create significance in trivial things, and you feel you are doing great duties to the nation, to the family, to humanity - as if without you the existence will simply drop. Nothing is important, whatsoever you are doing - but you have to give significance to it, because through significance the ego is fed, strengthened.

In ignorance, everything is nonessential. Whatsoever you do, even your meditation, your prayer, your going to the temple - all is trivial. Even when you pray, it cannot be deeper than when you read your newspaper. Because it is not a question of prayer, it is a question of you. If you have depth, then whenever you move, whatsoever you do, the act will have depth. If you don't have depth, even if you go to the temple it makes no difference; you enter the temple the same way as you enter a hotel. You are the same, temple and hotel can't make much difference.

Give a child a very costly toy made of diamonds, and he will do the same with that costly toy as he was doing with ordinary toys, because he is a child. He will play with it for a few moments, then throw it in the corner and go away.

Your depth brings depth to your actions. Even when an enlightened master raises his finger, it is meaningful, it is very significant. Why did this Gutei used to raise his finger... WHENEVER HE EXPLAINED A QUESTION ABOUT ZEN? Not always - whenever he explained a question about Zen he would raise a finger. Why? - because he was explaining and he was also showing, because whatsoever you ask about religion, one raised finger is the answer.

All your problems arise because you are not one. All your problems arise because you are fragmented. All your problems arise because you are a disunity, a chaos - not a harmony. And what is Zen, and what is yoga, and what is meditation? Nothing but coming to a unity. The very word yoga means unity, to be one, total, whole.

So Gutei was explaining about Zen: that explanation was secondary, the raised finger was the primary thing. He was saying something and he was also showing it. This is how an enlightened person lives: he says and he shows. His very being, his gestures, his movements, show what religion is.

If you cannot see, if you are blind or if you have lost that dimension of understanding, of looking, then you hear only the words. But if you know how to look, no words are needed. Words are useless, they can be dropped, they are secondary. But the raised finger cannot be dropped; that is primary, that is the only answer. All those who have known, anywhere in the world, they have all raised a finger. They are talking about the one and you are living in the many.

When you live in the many, problems are created, because living in the many, moving in many directions simultaneously, you become split into parts, then you are not together. Then one desire leads to the south, another desire leads to the north. Then one part of the mind loves, and another part of the mind hates. Then one part of the mind wants to accumulate wealth, and another says, "This is useless. Renounce!" Then one of the minds wants to meditate, become deep, become silent, and another mind says, "Why are you wasting your time?"

I have heard: Once it happened a man renounced the world while he was very young and went to the Himalayas. For almost twenty years he meditated there. Now he was forty. He was sitting and meditating, sitting and meditating, not doing anything at all. Even birds, wild animals, by and by lost their fear with him. He was there, and a very peace-loving man, simply sitting. Animals would come and sit, and when they would have to go hunting they would leave their children near him to be taken care of. His hair became very long, and birds would nest in his hair and put their eggs there, and he would have to take care of them.

After twenty years he got fed up with the whole thing. He said, "If I am to take care of others' children - animals, birds - why shouldn't I go and marry a woman and take care of my own children? This is absurd, and I am reaching nowhere. These twenty years are lost. Now there is no more time to lose because I am forty, and soon life will have ebbed!"

What was the problem? He was really meditating. What was the problem? Twenty years is a long time but the mind was continuously fragmented. One part was meditating, another was continuously saying, "Useless! Why are you wasting your time? Others are enjoying. Go back down to the plains.

People are happy there - dancing, drinking, eating, lovemaking. The world is in ecstasy and you are sitting here like a fool." Continuously hearing this other fragment for twenty years, the first fragment by and by became weak.

On the surface he was repeating mantras: Ram, Ram, Ram. But deep down this was the mantra:

the other part of the mind continuously saying, "Useless! Sitting like a fool and everybody is enjoying life and now life is ebbing. Soon you will not be able to enjoy anything. You are becoming old." This was the real mantra. On the surface, "Ram, Ram, Ram" - but deep down this was the real mantra.

When your mind is divided you cannot pray, you cannot meditate, because one part is always against it, and sooner or later it will win. Remember this: that the part that is engaged is losing energy every moment. And the part that is not engaged, but which is the critical part, is not losing any energy.

Sooner or later it will be more powerful.

You love a woman, and another part hates. You may hide this - everybody is hiding the other part - but unless you become enlightened, the other part is there. This loving part sooner or later will become weak because it is being used, the energy is being applied. The other hidden part, the hate part, will become stronger. So every marriage leads to divorce. Whether you do it or not, that's another thing - but every marriage becomes divorce, unless you are married to an enlightened person: that is very difficult.

This man got fed up one day. He started coming down from the Himalayas. He thought, "From where to start?" - he had completely forgotten the ways of the world, he had been so long out of it.

"From where to start? If you want to start in the world you will need a guide, just like when you want to start in the other world you will need a guide. Who can be the right guide for this world?" Then he remembered that in the old days, kings would send their sons and princes to the prostitutes, just to learn how to enter this world.

There is no better guide than a prostitute for this world. She is the world incarnate. Even love has become business for her - this is the last thing in the world - even love has become a profession, a commodity; she sells love. Money has become more important than love. This is the last thing in the world, and this can become the door.

So he went directly to a prostitute. It was evening and the prostitute was getting ready to go to a king. She said, "You are welcome, but I have been invited by a king. He is a miser, I don't hope that we will get much, but still - who knows? Sometimes even misers give. You come with us, come along." So the monk followed.

The whole night the prostitute danced, sang. And the king sat silently, he didn't give anything to her.

Then the last part of the night was dissolving, soon there would be light, and the woman was so tired. She said in a song to her husband, who was playing the tabla, she said to him, "Now, all that can be done I have done." She sang it so no one would understand, it was in a code. She said, "All that can be done I have done; now there seems to be no hope. It is better we should leave."

Inside his mind the monk thought, "This was the situation I was in: all that can be done has been done. Nothing more can be done, and I should leave." So he listened very attentively.

The husband said, "All that we could do we have done, but still a little of the night is left. Who knows?

We must see the whole business through, so a little more, be patient."

Hearing this, the monk thought, "Now what should I do? Maybe I was just on the brink when I left the Himalayas - a little more patience."

He had only one blanket, he was naked underneath. He became so enthralled that he threw his blanket at the feet of the prostitute and started running out of the palace. The king said to him, "Stop!

This is against the convention." This was the convention, that when a rich man is present, he should contribute first; otherwise this is insulting - that a king is present and this man has contributed.

The monk said, "You can kill me if it is against the convention, but she has saved my life. And it was such an ecstatic moment for me, I had to give something. I have nothing else, just that blanket, and I cannot wait for you, I am going to the Himalayas. This woman and this man who is playing the tabla, they have revealed a secret to me: a little more patience." And it is said the man became enlightened then and there. He never went to the Himalayas. Just coming down the steps of the palace he became enlightened.

What happened? For the first time the two parts became one. That is the meaning of patience.

Patience means, don't allow the other part to fight; patience means that you are ready to wait for infinity. If you are ready to wait for infinity, there is no possibility for the other part to say, "It has not happened yet." There is no sense in saying, "Why are you wasting your life?" If you are ready to wait for infinity then nothing is wasted. And if your waiting is eternal, infinite, then the other part cannot have its say.

Oneness is needed - when the other is not in a constant fight. That's why Gutei would always use his one finger whenever he was explaining Zen. He was saying, "Be one! - and all your problems will be solved."

There are many religions, many paths, many methods, but the essential point is the same: become one. Whatsoever you choose, become one. If you can be infinitely patient you will become one.

If you can surrender totally you will become one. If you become completely silent you will become one. If there are no thoughts and you are in meditation you will become one. If you pray to God and the prayer becomes so intense that even the person who is doing it is no longer there, the person who is saying the prayer has become dissolved in the prayer, one has remained - that will do.

Digging in the garden, if you can dig in such a way, so totally absorbed that nobody is left there who is the digger - you have become the digging, the actor has become the action, the observer has become the observation, the meditator has become the meditation - suddenly all the waves of maya disappear, all illusions drop. You are raised to a different layer, a different plane of being. You have come to the one.

When you are one, you reach the one. When you are many, you are in the world. The world is many and God is one. But to know that one you will first have to become one, otherwise you cannot know it. Only when you become like it will you be able to know it.

THE ZEN MASTER GUTEI MADE A PRACTICE OF RAISING HIS FINGER WHENEVER HE EXPLAINED A QUESTION ABOUT ZEN.

Zen is from a Sanskrit term, it comes from dhyan. It is the Japanese form of dhyan. When Bodhidharma took the teachings of Buddha to China, dhyan, in Chinese, became ch'an. When ch'an was taken to Japan, it became zen. But the original term is dhyan. Whenever Gutei would talk about dhyan, meditation, he would raise his one finger. Oneness is dhyan, oneness is all that has to be achieved - that is the end.

A VERY YOUNG DISCIPLE BEGAN TO IMITATE HIM...

Of course he must have been very young, because only children imitate. The more mature you are, the less you imitate; the more immature, the more imitation. If you are still imitating you are juvenile, you have not gained maturity, you have not yet become grown-up. What is 'grown-upness'? If you ask me I will say, the realization that you have to be yourself and not an imitator, this is what maturity is.

If you look within yourself you will not find this maturity. You have been imitating others. Somebody has got a new car - suddenly you start imitating, you need a new car. Somebody has got a bigger house, you need a bigger house. The neighbors are constantly on your nerves. They are getting this and that, and you have to imitate. And when you imitate you are just like monkeys. Don't imitate. Be mature. Because imitation cannot lead you anywhere. Why? What is imitation, and what is being true and authentic?

Imitation means the ideal comes from without, it is not your desire. It is not something happening within you, it is not your nature flowering in it. Somebody else has given you the ideal and you go after it. If you don't achieve it, you will be in misery because you have not achieved the ideal. If you achieve it, you will be in misery because this was never your ideal. You never wanted it, because it never happened to your inner being.

That's why so much misery exists in the world: people imitating others. If they fail, they are in misery because they think they have not attained. If they succeed, they are in misery. Remember, nothing fails like success - if it is an imitation, nothing fails like success. You may reach the goal after a long strenuous journey, effort, wastage of time and energy, and then suddenly you find, "I never wanted it - it was somebody else. I borrowed the ideal." Don't borrow the ideal, this is childish.

A VERY YOUNG DISCIPLE BEGAN TO IMITATE HIM...

He must have been very young, juvenile, childish. He started imitating him.

... AND WHENEVER ANYONE ASKED THE DISCIPLE WHAT HIS MASTER HAD BEEN PREACHING ABOUT, THE BOY WOULD RAISE HIS FINGER...

The same way, the same gesture as the master used to do. People must have enjoyed it, they must have laughed. The boy was a perfect imitator; he would make the same face, he would raise the same finger, he would try to look the same way. He acted it well.

Howsoever efficient you become in acting, you will remain immature. Be true to yourself, even if you are not so efficient there. But be true to yourself, because your own truth can lead you to the ultimate truth. Nobody else's truth can be your truth.

You have a seed within you. Only if that seed sprouts and becomes a tree will you have a flowering; then you will have an ecstasy, a benediction. But if you are following others that seed will remain dead. And you may accumulate all the ideals in the world and become successful, but you will feel empty, because nothing else can fill you - only your seed, when it becomes a tree, will fill you. You will feel fulfillment only when your truth has come to flower, never before.

And people may appreciate your success in imitation - they always appreciate it. This boy must have been appreciated in the monastery because he was acting just like the master. He must have become famous. Imitators become famous, but they don't know they are committing suicide. But you can commit suicide if people appreciate you.

I have heard about an actor who died. His funeral attracted many, many people, many thousands.

His wife was beating her chest and crying and screaming. And when she saw thousands of people had come she said, "If he had known this - that so many people will come - he would have died sooner."

You can commit suicide if you are appreciated. You all have committed suicide, because imitators are always appreciated. Authentic people are never appreciated, because an authentic person is a rebel. He will not imitate anybody. He will say, "I am not going to be a Buddha, I am not going to be a Krishna or a Jesus. One is enough! One Jesus is enough, why imitate?" And the second Jesus, howsoever beautiful, will be just a carbon copy - nothing worthwhile. Why imitate Jesus? And God is not going to ask you in the end why you didn't become a Jesus. He will ask why you didn't become yourself.

I have heard about one Hassid mystic: he was a very poor man, Magid was his name. Nobody knew much about him, but he was a real, authentic man. He was dying, and somebody said, "Magid, have you prayed to God to make you like Moses?"

Magid opened his eyes and said, "Stop! Don't say such things while I am dying. Because God is not going to ask me, 'Why didn't you become a Moses?' He will ask, 'Magid, why didn't you become a real Magid?'"

The others didn't follow it, they couldn't understand, because this seems insulting to Moses. It is not. It is not insulting to Moses. Moses became Moses, that is his beauty. Magid has to become Magid, that is his beauty. And only beauty can be offered, only a flowered being can be offered to God. How can God ask a rose, "Why didn't you become a lotus?" How can God be so foolish as to ask a rose, "Why didn't you become a lotus?" No! He is not so foolish as you think. He will ask the rose, "Why didn't you flower totally? Why have you come like a bud and not like a flower?"

Flowering is the thing. Whether you are a lotus or a rose, or some unknown, unspecified flower makes no difference. Who you are is not the point. Whether you come to the divine door as a flower, flowered, open, or you have come still closed....

A VERY YOUNG DISCIPLE BEGAN TO IMITATE HIM...

And whenever you go to a master, that is the possibility - the first possibility: you will start to imitate him. Remember, this is not going to help, this is dangerous. You are committing suicide. Understand a master, drink his presence, eat his presence as much as you can, but don't become an imitator.

Don't become false.

GUTEI GOT TO HEAR ABOUT THIS, AND WHEN HE CAME UPON THE BOY AS HE WAS DOING IT ONE DAY, HE SEIZED THE BOY, WHIPPED OUT A KNIFE, CUT OFF HIS FINGER, AND THREW IT AWAY.

Seems to be a very hard master, very cruel. Masters are cruel, otherwise they cannot be of any help to you. They are cruel because they have such a deep compassion. Why did the master cut the finger? Any less hard and he won't be a help to this boy. Something very severe is needed, something is needed which goes to the very heart. This has to be understood.

You listen to me. If you have come just as a curious person it cannot go very deep. If your curiosity is just intellectual, to know what I am saying, it cannot go very deep; you will not be able to understand what I am saying at all. If life has given you much suffering and you are here because of that suffering, to understand how to transcend it, then what I am saying will go deep. Suffering gives you depth. Suffering leads you towards the center.

If you are in love with me, not an intellectual relationship - which is not a relationship at all - but a love relationship, if you are emotionally in touch with me, then it will go still deeper. Because when you love a person you hear him from the heart, not from the head. And the head is the most rotten thing, rubbish, just a wastepaper basket - nothing much. All that is rubbish, you go on gathering in the head. Rubbish never enters the heart, it accumulates in your head. Only that which is very essential goes in the heart.

So if you are here just as a curious person, just out of curiosity, you will hear me, but just on the surface. It is not going to do much to you. If you are here because you have suffered - if you have come not as a curious person, but as a person who has known life, its suffering, and a maturity has come to you and you want really to be transformed - then you will hear from a deeper depth.

But the depth can go still deeper. If you are in love with me, if you have a trust, then you will be more open - because only trust can be open; otherwise you are always afraid and you are always closed.

When you are totally open - you have suffered, life has given you a depth and then you trust, you are totally open - then the thing can go immediately to the very heart. You will never be the same again once you hear it.

GUTEI GOT TO HEAR ABOUT THIS... A master always comes to know who are the imitators.

There is no need to... they are so apparent, so obvious. I know very well who are the imitators here.

An imitator cannot deceive the one he is imitating. He can deceive anybody else, but he cannot deceive the one he is imitating. His falsity is so patent.

People come to me and they repeat my own words, my gestures, and they think they can deceive me. They can deceive others but they cannot deceive me, because their words are so shallow. You can repeat the same words, there is no problem: the word is not the problem - how much depth you bring to the word, that comes from your being. The word can be used by anybody.

You can chant the whole Gita, but those words will not be the same as they were when they came out of Krishna. You can repeat the whole Bible, but when those words were used by Jesus they had a tremendous energy, a transforming force - because Jesus was in those words. In every word his being was moving towards you. You can use the same words.... On every Christian pulpit millions of priests are repeating the same words - the Sermon on the Mount - and the words are so shallow, and they have done such a disservice. It would have been better that they were not repeating, because when you go on repeating certain words, they lose the magic. They become so used, people become so used to hearing them, that they become almost useless, cliches.

Gutei must have come to know about this boy who was imitating him, and... AS HE WAS DOING IT ONE DAY, BE SEIZED THE BOY, WHIPPED OUT A KNIFE, CUT OFF HIS FINGER, AND THREW IT AWAY.

Too severe! But the man Gutei must have been very, very compassionate. Only out of compassion you can be so hard. Difficult to understand, because we think that cruelty, hardness, is always there where there is no compassion. No - then you will not understand an enlightened person. An enlightened person will not be hard on you if he has no compassion - why bother? But he will be hard on you because he bothers, he is worried about you, he wants to help you. And less than that won't do.

What happened? When he whipped out his knife, took the boy's finger, cut it off and threw it away, what happened? When the boy must have seen that the master had whipped out the knife, what must have happened? If suddenly somebody comes at you with a knife, what will happen? Thinking stops. You cannot think, it is so new, so novel. The old mind simply stops, it cannot work it out, "What is happening?" And nobody could have ever conceived that Gutei will bring a knife.

Can you think of me some day bringing a knife? It was so impossible, incomprehensible. And Gutei whipped out the knife - and the boy must have been in shock: thinking stopped. It was a great shock-treatment. And coming from Gutei, almost impossible. The boy could not have ever dreamed... and then not only taking it out, he cut off the finger.

When Gutei was cutting off the finger, when the finger was severed from the hand, what was happening to the boy inside? For the first time in his life he was attentive without thought. He could not be sleepy in such a moment. Who can be sleepy when somebody is cutting off your finger? You cannot be sleepy. The pain was so intense, the suffering was so intense, that in a sudden moment the boy was transformed. He was no more a child, he became mature.

It can happen in an instant; it may not happen in many lives. The imitation has to be cut severely.

The finger is just symbolic. The boy has to be hit severely, and the suffering must go to the very root of his being, and it should be so unknown that he cannot make a theory out of it. He cannot think about it, he cannot philosophize. He was simply shocked. The mind can move nowhere. He must have looked with fresh eyes for the first time, without thoughts floating in them. And the pain was so severe and so sudden that it must have gone to the very heart.

Remember, pleasure never goes so deep as pain. Pleasure never goes so deep. It cannot go, the very nature of pleasure is superficial. So people who live in pleasure always remain superficial, shallow. You cannot find a depth in a rich man - difficult. You may find it in a beggar; you may not look at the beggar, because you think he is a beggar - but don't be too fixed in your ideas. When a beggar passes you, look! He has suffered much, he has lived in much pain, and pain gives depth.

A rich man is always shallow, superficial: he has lived in pleasure. Pleasure cannot go very deep.

In this suffering the pain was severe, and so sudden that the mind stopped revolving and the heart was hit.

AS THE BOY RAN OFF HOWLING, GUTEI SHOUTED, "STOP!"

This is what I have been saying to you. But first you must be in deep suffering and howling, only then the 'stop' can be meaningful. The boy ran howling in suffering and pain, and Gutei shouted, "Stop!" If the 'stop' is shouted in the right moment, it works deeply.

Suddenly he stopped! What happened in this stopping? There was no more pain. If you stop suddenly, the whole attention moves towards the sound 'stop'. The body is left behind, you become attentive. And when you are so attentive, the body cannot disturb, the body cannot divert. The finger was not there, blood was flowing - the pain was there, but this 'stop' took his whole attention towards the master.

When attention is not there, there is no pain. Pain exists not in the body but in the attention. If you are ill, lying down on the bed, what do you do? You continuously pay attention to your illness. You are feeding it. And something has to be done about it, because it has become a very great problem all over the world.

Doctors suggest, whenever you are ill, "Lie down and rest." But what will you do in rest? You will pay attention to the pain, and then you are feeding it. Attention feeds it. Then you are continuously thinking about it; it becomes a mantra, a chanting inside that, "I am ill, I am ill. This and that is wrong."

Complaints - and you go all over the body again and again and you try to find what is wrong. And that becomes a brooding, a very pathological thing. And this may become a continuity for the illness.

You will get hypnotized by the illness.

If too much attention is paid to illness, you become a hypnotic victim. If you continuously complain about something, it becomes a vicious circle; you complain, then you are inviting it, because every complaint means you are again giving attention, again attention. It becomes a repetitive thing.

I have heard - and many times it has happened: a person was ill, paralyzed; for fifteen years he couldn't walk. Then one night, suddenly, the house caught fire. There was a fire, the house was burning, and everybody ran out of it. The man forgot that he was paralyzed, so he also ran out of the house. Only outside the house, when his family found him running and coming out, they said, "What! You are paralyzed!" - the man fell down.

What happened? In this particular moment of intense accident - the house is on fire - the man forgot for a moment that he was paralyzed. If you can forget your illness, the illness will disappear sooner than any medicine can help. If you cannot forget it, if you continuously brood about it, then you are playing with the wound. The more you play with the wound the deeper it goes.

What happened when Gutei shouted, "Stop!"? The boy looked at Gutei, the howling stopped, the pain disappeared, as if the finger had not been cut off.

THE BOY STOPPED, TURNED AROUND, AND LOOKED AT HIS MASTER THROUGH HIS TEARS.

The eyes were filled with tears, he was howling and crying and weeping. He stopped! The pain disappeared, but the tears cannot disappear so soon - they were there.

GUTEI WAS HOLDING UP HIS OWN FINGER. THE BOY WENT TO HOLD UP HIS FINGER, AND WHEN HE REALIZED IT WAS NOT THERE, HE BOWED.

IN THAT INSTANT, HE BECAME ENLIGHTENED.

GUTEI WAS HOLDING UP HIS OWN FINGER - a very intense moment of awareness, a very great device, a situation created by the master. Mind is no longer there, the pain has disappeared, because attention has been called somewhere else... as if the boy will not be able to breathe in this situation. "Stop!" - and the breathing has stopped, and the thinking has stopped, and he has forgotten that he has no finger now. Just out of old habit, when the master raised his finger, he raised his - which was not there. It shows that he has completely forgotten what has happened.

In that moment he was not the body, otherwise how can you forget? - the pain, and your finger has been cut off, and you are bleeding, and your eyes are still filled with tears, and just a moment before he was howling. This "Stop!" caused a miracle.

THE BOY STOPPED, TURNED ROUND, AND LOOKED AT HIS MASTER THROUGH HIS TEARS.

GUTEI WAS HOLDING UP HIS OWN FINGER.

Just out of old habit he always used to hold his finger up whenever the master was teaching his disciples about Zen. He would stand by the side of the chair, or at the back of the chair, and when the master would hold his finger up, he would also do the same. It had become so automatic. Body is an automaton, it is a mechanism, it is mechanical.

THE BOY WENT TO HOLD UP HIS FINGER, AND WHEN HE REALIZED IT WAS NOT THERE - and then he saw, and the finger was not there - HE BOWED.

What happened? Why did he became so grateful and bow? ... Because for the first time he realized he is not the body. He is the attention, not the body; awareness, not the body; consciousness, not the body. The finger is not there, the pain has disappeared, the howling is no more. Thinking is not moving around the wound; he is not brooding about it at all. He is no more a body, he is not embodied. He simply is out of his body. For the first time he realized he is a soul, a consciousness - the body is just the house.

You are not the body; you are in it, but you are not the body. If your attention can come to such intensity, you will realize that you are not the body. And once you realize you are not the body, you know you are deathless. Who can cut your finger off? How can one be violent to you? Nobody can destroy you. That's why he bowed to the master in deep gratitude: "You have given me this opportunity to know the deepest level of my being, which is immortal."

IN THAT INSTANT HE BECAME ENLIGHTENED.

What is enlightenment? Coming to understand, coming to realize that you are not the body. You are the light within; not the lamp, but the flame. You are neither body nor mind. Mind belongs to the body; mind is not beyond body, it is part of the body - most subtle, most refined, but it is part of the body. Mind is also atomic, as body is atomic. You are neither the body nor the mind - then you come to know who you are. And to know who you are is enlightenment.

When Gutei cut off the finger of the disciple, the pail, the old pail fell down, broken, the water flowed out - no water, no moon! The disciple became enlightened.

But Gutei must have waited for the right moment. For many, many years this young man had been doing that. He waited, waited. You cannot force the right moment, it comes when it comes. You grow towards it, you grope towards it, and the master waits. When it comes, when it is there, anything can become the excuse, anything. Even a shout, "Stop!" and the old pail is broken. Suddenly reflections disappear because there is no water. You look at the real moon, you are enlightened.

Enlightened means you have realized who you are.

Enough for today.