1,758,640,175 devils

Friends, today I am going to talk first about religion and the crime that it has committed against humanity, nature, environment, ecology.

Religion's crimes are many, innumerable, but the worst crime is that it has placed man at the center of existence. It has given the idea to the whole of humanity that the whole existence is for your use: you are God's greatest creation.

A man-oriented vision of existence is bound to create catastrophes in nature, it is bound to destroy the ecological balance, it is bound to give man the strange idea of an ego.

The Bible says God created man in his own image, and man has believed it. Just look at your face in the mirror: is it God's face in the mirror?

The truth is that Christianity has been befooling humanity. It is not that God made man in his own image, it is man who has made God in his own image. And all the scriptures of all the religions have given man a strange licentiousness over nature, over animals and birds. That has culminated in destroying many species of animals, birds. It has destroyed millions of trees for no reason. Every second that passes, one football ground is cleaned of all greenery, all trees.

When India became independent, it had thirty-three million hectares of trees. Today it has only eleven million hectares.

This man-centered view begins with Genesis, in the Bible. In Genesis it says:

"Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

This is the ultimate crime that has made man violent against nature, given him the freedom to conquer innocent animals, to destroy them. It has made man barbarious.

Now we are suffering because all those trees have been destroyed and more are being destroyed continuously. There is a certain balance in existence. These trees are your brothers and your sisters, there is no question of dominion. You exhale carbon dioxide, they inhale it. They exhale oxygen, you inhale it. Such a deep relationship... You cannot exist without trees, nor can trees exist without you; your existence is so deeply rooted in each other.

As trees have become less and less, the level of oxygen in the air has gone down and down and down. Now you are living only a fragmentary life. You may not have thought about it....

Why don't you breathe fully? Your lungs have six thousand sacs which have to be filled, but you breathe shallowly, so only two thousand sacs are filled, and four thousand remain stagnant, filled with dead carbon dioxide which is the cause of millions of diseases. It reduces your lifespan, it weakens your spirit, it destroys your intelligence. You are living at the minimum just because of this statement in Genesis that you "have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

Man has killed so many beautiful species of animals just for his food, has killed so many birds -- whole species have disappeared.

In India, the lion was the national animal, but stupid hunters -- particularly the British hunters, who have been in power in this country for almost three hundred years -- destroyed all the lions, the most beautiful animal in existence. Such a dignity, such power, such grandeur! And what were they doing? -- just decorating their sitting-rooms with the stuffed heads of the lions.

Today the whole species is on the verge of disappearing. There are not more than two dozen lions in the whole of India. The Indian government had to change its national animal from the lion to the tiger, because lions are going to disappear. When a lion dies, it is never replaced.

And it is not only the British Christians who destroyed them; even Hindu monks sit on a lion's skin. You will not believe how stupid people can be.

Religion seems to give a certain stupidity to people who were born intelligent.

The Hindu monks sit on the skin of a lion -- and of course, one lion has to be killed for one monk -- and the ideology that they preach is that by sitting on the lion's skin you can remain celibate. My foot! Stupidity has no limit.

What does the lion's skin have to do with your celibacy? Lions are not celibate; one has never heard about a lion who was celibate. What scientific proof is there? I don't know a single monk who is a celibate, and I have known thousands of monks -- Hindus, Jainas....

Just now two books have come out about one of the richest sects of the Jainas, Terapanth.

The sect is headed by Acharya Tulsi. Seventeen hundred monks are under him, and three times more nuns -- and all are sexually perverted.

These two books that have just come out, Acharya Tulsi tried hard to get the government to ban them. But the publisher of the books is also a follower of the same sect. He knows that what is written in those two books by ex-monks of Acharya Tulsi is absolutely true.

He said, "I will fight against the government and go to the Supreme Court. They cannot prevent a truth!"

Once I was in Acharya Tulsi's camp for seven days. I could not believe... so many monks, so many nuns came in contact with me, and they told me that such perversion is going on behind the scenes -- and even Acharya Tulsi is not an exception. Homosexuality is widely prevalent, heterosexuality is widely prevalent. Those nuns are used almost like prostitutes. They go on preaching about celibacy, and their own reality is all kinds of perversions.

One of the ex-members of the cult had come to me directly when he left the cult. He wanted to write the book, but I said, "Wait a little. Nobody will listen to you. You just create some status for yourself and then write the book. The book is absolutely essential"

-- because he himself was the victim of Acharya Tulsi's sexuality, not to say of other monks.

Beautiful Jaina girls are invited to become nuns. It is thought, it is preached, it has been propagated for hundreds of years that to become a nun is to become holy: you bring prestige and blessings to your family too. So when they see a beautiful girl, they invite the family: "The girl has such spiritual powers that she needs to be initiated as a nun."

The family is happy, the community is happy, the girl is happy that she has been chosen as a spiritual being of tremendous possibilities. But the reality is totally different. She has been chosen because she is beautiful, young, and the monks are sitting there hungry.

I made this statement, and not a SINGLE Indian newspaper had the courage to print it!

And when my press office asked, inquired what had happened to my statement -- I take the whole responsibility for it, you need not be worried! -- they said, "We are feeling very nervous to print it." And it has not been printed.

Perhaps they have been bribed by the followers of Acharya Tulsi. Perhaps the government is behind it, because Acharya Tulsi has a hold over many votes and much money that he manages through his followers to donate to the political parties who are in power.

All religions are sexually perverted. They have to be. Their only creative and positive act through the centuries is aids-positive.

And because Genesis says, "Be fruitful" -- that means populate the earth more and more - - "and multiply" -- not even double, but multiply -- that's why the Christian pope and the bishops and the cardinals and the priests are all against birth control: because it goes against Genesis, the very foundation of their religion.

So this whole population explosion, which is going to kill half of humanity through utter starvation, who is responsible for it? Genesis -- and these stupid bishops and popes, and cardinals and priests.

You will be surprised to know that when Ronald Reagan came to power, he immediately cut the budget for controlling the poor countries' population, because he was a fundamentalist, fascist Christian. Since he has been in power, he has fulfilled the statement of Genesis: "Be fruitful and multiply."

When India became independent, it had only four hundred million people. Now it has nine hundred million people, and by the end of this century it will be one billion human beings. After forty years it will double: there will be two billion people in India. From where are you going to get food?

Right now, half the country is starving, and more than half the country is undernourished.

Even a politician, the chief minister of Haryana, has come with the statement -- because his state is starving -- that if this situation continues, India will become a subhuman species. It will lose all intelligence, it will lose all strength and power, it will lose all the dignity of human beings.

It is very rare to hear the truth from a politician, very rare to hear the truth from a religious man.

In his book, IN GOD'S NAME, David Yallop exposes the corruption of the Vatican. He tells how Pope John Paul -- the pope before this Polack pope -- had ordered an investigation of the Vatican Bank after reports that it was involved in money laundering.

The pope had also made it clear that under his direction the church would approve of birth control.

Suddenly, after these two radical moves, thirty-three days after being made pope, this healthy man died of a heart attack. His personal notes, will, and medicine bottles mysteriously disappeared. Before the cause of death could be confirmed, his body was embalmed, a process which makes it impossible to detect the presence of poison. Many people feel he was murdered.

The new pope, a Polack, promoted the head of the same bank to archbishop. For this man who had been the head of the bank, the government of Italy has issued an arrest warrant - - but they cannot enter the Vatican. The Vatican is a country of eight square miles just in the middle of Rome, the capital of Italy. The sovereign head of the religion and the country is the pope. Of course, nobody can enter there to arrest him. And they know perfectly well that he has to be arrested by the Italian government if he goes out of the Vatican, because of what they have been doing through the bank...

It is the greatest mafia. All the heroin money -- not a small account, six hundred million dollars per year! -- they are turning into white money. This is the whole function of the Vatican Bank. John Paul was a man of great intelligence. He wanted to find out the facts about the bank, because it is committing the greatest crime, for which millions of young people are suffering in jails.

After only thirty-three days... This is the least time any pope has been a pope. He was perfectly healthy; he had no record of any heart diseases, and he was found sitting in his bed, dead, clutching a paper in his hand, in which he had written his will and made two points clear: that the bank should be completely investigated, and if there is any crime being committed, the persons should be punished. And second, the situation has changed completely since the days of Genesis. Birth control should be allowed, and all kinds of birth control methods, pills, should be allowed to humanity -- particularly to Catholics. It is not the time to multiply.

This paper that he was clutching in his hand -- and he was dead -- this paper also disappeared. And they did not get a certificate from a medical expert that he had died naturally; they immediately embalmed the body without telling anyone. After embalming the body there is no way to find whether the person has been poisoned or not.

As far as I can see, he was certainly murdered because he was going against the criminal bank, and against the criminal attitude of the Christians -- they go on being against abortion, against birth control pills, against any kind of method that can prevent the population explosion.

This is not a unique case.

Who crucified Jesus? The religious rabbis, the high priest, the head rabbi of the great temple of the Jews in Jerusalem. They all, without any exception, wanted this innocent young man, who was only thirty-three years old, to be crucified, for no reason at all. He had not committed any crime. He had not murdered anyone, he had not raped anyone.

Even the Roman governor of Judea was surprised to know that they wanted to crucify Jesus. And the Roman governor present in Jerusalem, Pontius Pilate, wanted to free him, because he could not see any harm. "Perhaps he says things which Jews don't want to hear, so close your ears and go on your way. Don't listen! But this is not a cultured and human way. Because you disagree with him and you cannot even give arguments to this uneducated Jesus, crucifixion is the answer...? But Pontius Pilate hoped that at the last moment...

Every year when the Jewish holidays start, the criminals who have been condemned are crucified. Three persons, three criminals were going to be crucified, and one was Jesus, who was not a criminal at all. Pontius Pilate was hoping that the high priest of the temple -- the highest post for the rabbis, the learned scholars of Judaism, who had the right to release one person from crucifixion -- would ask for Jesus to be released, because he had not committed any crime. But even the high priest, with all the thousands of rabbis surrounding the temple, shouted that Barabbas, a criminal beyond conception...

Barabbas had murdered seven people, he had raped many women; he was a perfect drunkard. He had remained in jail almost his whole life. Every time he was released, within two days he would be back -- he had murdered somebody or he had raped some woman. Now finally they decided he should be crucified -- he was incurable. It was a shock to Pontius Pilate, but all the rabbis, including the chief rabbi, shouted, "We want Barabbas to be released."

Even Barabbas could not believe it. He knew Jesus. Once in a while he had heard him, and he had loved the young man. He was saying beautiful things. He had hoped that if he could remain out of jail, he could listen more to this young man.

Jesus had been talking to people for only three years, and not to many people, because everybody was afraid of the religious hierarchy: if you are found in company with Jesus you may be punished also. So only a few young people, who had the courage and the guts, followed him and listened to him.

Barabbas, whenever he had the chance to be out of jail, went to hear him. And when he saw that he was to be released, and this poor fellow with great ideas, with beautiful visions, is being crucified, even Barabbas said to the people, "It is absolutely criminal. It is perfectly right for me to be crucified, I have done enough crimes! But this young man...

he has not even started living, he is only thirty-three."

And within seven days Barabbas killed another man. But it was the rule of the Roman empire that once a man is released from crucifixion by the mercy of the emperor, he cannot be condemned to death again. It is a tremendously dramatic story -- far more dramatic than the story of Jesus.

Christians say Jesus did many miracles, but no contemporary Jewish record exists. If those miracles really had happened -- a dead man had been resurrected, water had been turned into wine, with one loaf of bread he fed thousands of people, he walked on water - - do you think a man like this would go unnoticed by the contemporaries? Not a single reference even to the name of Jesus is made by any contemporary literature.

But Barabbas really was a man of miracles. This was a miracle. After committing seven murders, many rapes, he is released... and it is asked that he be released by the most holy and religious rabbis, unanimously! Is it not a miracle?

And after seven days -- it was just his habit -- he killed a man, he raped some woman, he was arrested again. But now he could not be crucified, so he was sent to Greece. That was the way. If somebody cannot be crucified, once he has been released out of the mercy of the emperor, he was sent to the coal mines in Greece. Those coal mines had become so deep, and the technology was almost nil, that almost every month thousands of people died, because the mine would collapse.

Just when Barabbas entered the coal mine, the third day the mine collapsed. Everybody down the mine -- and there were almost two thousand people -- everybody died except Barabbas. Don't you call it a miracle?

Even the emperor, the Roman emperor, was impressed. His queen too was much impressed -- "This is the real man of God!" -- so he was called to Rome, the capital. The games were going to begin, and in the games one special event was fighting with a lion who had been kept hungry for many days.

The emperor wanted to know whether this Barabbas was really a man of God, so Barabbas was put into the stadium. A hungry lion was released, and Barabbas fought with his totality, because there was no need to save anything; the lion was going to kill him.

But you will be surprised: he killed the lion. With such totality and such urgency, when life is at stake, who cares for anything? Even the lion became afraid -- and he killed it with his bare hands!

Even the emperor could not believe his eyes. It had never happened before! And the queen wanted at least to touch the robe of Barabbas, so she stood outside the stadium gate, and when Barabbas was taken out, she just touched his robe, and she said, "You are a man of God."

But all these years he could not forget the face of Jesus. That innocent face, that young face, that peaceful and silent face had been haunting him day and night. So as he was released -- the emperor had to release him -- he immediately found an underground group of people who had turned to Christianity. He joined the group, and the day he joined the group and accepted a cross to hang around his neck, he was caught immediately and crucified. No miracle happened. He died as a Christian.

Why was Jesus crucified?

Religion cannot tolerate any man with new visions, with new dreams, with new hopes for mankind, with new promises to be fulfilled. No religion can tolerate the emergence of anybody who has a new image of man. They feel hurt. That means their scriptures have been wrong, that up to now what they have been worshipping has been stupid. For this single man they cannot leave their whole heritage.

They have no argument against Jesus, or against Socrates, or against al-Hillaj Mansoor; their only argument is crucifixion. Religion has committed so many crimes for centuries.

Every religion thinks others are wrong, and to put them right, the simple way is to cut off their heads. Christians have been killing Jews, Mohammedans; Mohammedans have been killing Christians, Hindus; Hindus have been killing Mohammedans, Buddhists -- in the name of God! What kind of God have you got?

According to a book by Corrado Balducci, a diplomat of the Vatican, the devil's army consists of exactly one billion, seven hundred and fifty-eight million, six hundred and forty thousand, one hundred and seventy-five devils. Certainly this Vatican diplomat must have visited hell!

And how many people are in the army of God, may I ask? Just those three fellows -- God, the Holy Ghost, and the only begotten son, Jesus? Is there any possibility of God winning against the devil?

I will repeat the number so you can remember it. The devil's army consists of exactly one billion, seven hundred and fifty-eight million, six hundred and forty thousand, one hundred and seventy-five devils. There is no hope for humanity.

Perhaps that's why God has escaped to some faraway star, with his only begotten son and the Holy Ghost -- seeing the situation.

One wonders how these people come to these conclusions. This diplomat, if he has been to hell... In Christianity you cannot return from hell. Once you are in hell you are forever in hell, for eternity. How did he manage, against his own religion, to come out of hell?

And without going to hell, do you think anybody can count this big a number, just sitting in the Vatican?

And no Christian has even questioned the stupidity of this man. That surprises me. I simply cannot believe it. On the one hand, Christianity says, if you fall into hell, it is finished; the door is closed forever, and eternally you will burn in hellfire.

It was on this point that one of the most significant thinkers of this century, Bertrand Russell, dropped out of Christianity -- on this point particularly. He wrote a book, WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN, and the first point is that "I cannot conceive that in one life..."

because Christianity believes only in one life. In Hinduism, in Jainism, in Buddhism, you can commit millions of sins because millions of lives are available, backwards and forwards. You can go on doing so many sins, there is no need to count. But in Christianity, in Judaism, in Mohammedanism, there is only one life.

"In one life," Bertrand Russell asks the question, "how many sins can I commit? All the sins that I have committed, and all the sins that I wanted to commit but I have not committed, and all the sins I have dreamt of committing... Even if all these are considered to be sins, the hardest judge in the world cannot put me in jail for more than four and a half years. An eternity of hellfire? -- I have not committed enough sins yet!"

This is so absurd, that a man like Bertrand Russell... He has many other points, but this is the basic point: that it is absolutely absurd. If you go on committing sins from the time you are born, day and night, till you enter your grave, then too an eternity of hellfire is not justified. Seventy years continuous sinning -- without sleeping, without eating -- then too, seventy years are only seventy years. Even that many sins... although you cannot commit that many sins. You will need some time to eat, some time to sleep, some time to love, some time to go to the movies. And what will happen to television?

But Christianity goes on, without giving any reasoning, insisting that if you commit sins... How many sins? At least a number should be given, that if you commit one dozen sins nothing is said about it. You can commit one sin, you can commit a thousand sins...

the punishment is the same. What kind of justice is this?

And these people who have been counting the devils...

In the Middle Ages they were killing women, calling them witches.

The word 'witch' is not a bad word. In its origins it means a wise woman. But Christianity polluted the word, destroyed its beauty. And what was the process -- how do you find a witch, how do you prove that she is a witch? Once proved, the only punishment was to burn her alive at the crossroads in the main part of the city.

A special court was arranged by the pope to find all the witches and destroy them, because they were "possessed by the devil."

Nobody knows anything about God, nobody knows anything about the devil, and thousands and thousands of women were burnt alive! How did they manage it? -- a simple process.

Anybody could inform, even anonymously: "I suspect a certain woman in my neighborhood is a witch." That woman would be caught immediately by the court, forced into jail, tortured, beaten, sexually abused.

I remembered those women when my back was bad, some eight years ago. A traction machine was brought to pull my body -- the legs in one direction, the head in another direction -- to put the backbone straight. At that time I remembered that this traction machine was invented by the Christians to torture women. I have known a little bit of torture on that machine, but those women were torn apart. Sometimes legs would come off... sometimes there was no need to burn them alive. The head would come off....

Big blocks of ice would be put on their chests. Unless they confessed, there was no way of getting out of the jail: "Confess that you are having sexual relations with the devil!"

Naturally, anybody would think it is better to confess than to go through all this torture.

And this torture would continue until they confessed; there was no way out.

And the bishops who were torturing them would teach them how they have to confess in the court. When they confessed that, "Yes, I have been having a sexual relationship with the devil," then the priest would tell them, "You have to tell the court how you recognize the devil. You have to tell them that he has a forked penis" -- so he can enter into the women from both the holes -- "that's how I recognized that it is a devil."

Those poor women had to confess this in the court. And the court would ask, "How do you recognize it is the devil, not a man?" Then they would describe the genital mechanism of the devil. It has certainly to be special, forked; that was enough proof.

They created the confession, they created the proof, and the woman was burnt alive. They destroyed thousands of women in the name of God -- because the devil has to be destroyed.

But now, seeing the number of devils... I don't think that just by killing a few thousand women by burning you can destroy the devil. You are destroying women, the devil will find other women -- and so many devils!

Strange... you should have burnt the devil, not the woman. The woman was a victim; the criminal was the devil. But it is a strange logic: the victim is burned because you cannot find the devil anywhere.

No devil exists, nor does any God exist. These are fictions created by the religions to torture humanity, to exploit humanity, to create fear and greed in mankind.

And the theology of Christians has not changed. It is still the same.

Moses, the founder of Judaism, certainly lied to the Jews when he said, "I have been told by God that you are the chosen people of the world, and he has told me to lead you to the holy land, Israel."

If he had been told exactly the address where Israel was, then why did it take forty years to find Israel? Forty long years of wandering in the deserts of Saudi Arabia... And my feeling, without any doubt, is that what he called Israel was simply to hide the fact that he had lied. Israel is just a poor place, mountainous, not rich; in no way can it be called God's holy place.

Moses recognized it when he left the people he had brought from Egypt. Almost three fourths of them had died of hunger, of thirst... forty years of wandering in the desert. The third generation of the people had come into being, who did not care much about Moses; they didn't know anything about who this fellow was. Seeing the situation, he simply told them, "This is the place."

But life was going to be very hard, harder than it was in Egypt. And for four thousand years the Jews have suffered more than they ever suffered in Egypt. In Egypt they were slaves, but even that slavery was far better than this false promise and hope. And, seeing the situation, he must have been thinking, "These young people don't know me, their fathers or forefathers had come with me. Seeing this hard land, unproductive, they are not going to forgive me for leading them to this place." Just as an excuse to escape from Israel, he said, "One of our tribes has got lost in the desert. I am going to find them while you manage the holy land of God."

Moses went in search of the lost tribe, which had come to Kashmir. They had settled in Kashmir. Kashmir looks like a holy place. The first Moghul emperor, Babar -- when he came to conquer India, he had to enter through Kashmir -- looking at the beauty of Kashmir, he said, "If there is any paradise, it is here. It is here!"

Moses came to Kashmir; his grave is in Kashmir. And because he had given a false idea of superiority, the Jews have suffered immensely. Their suffering has not yet come to an end. The whole responsibility goes to Moses.

Religious founders have been lying in every possible way. Moses lied to his people that on the Sinai mountain he had seen God, and God had given him ten commandments.

Nobody has seen God.

Just think of yourself: if by chance you come across God, what are you going to do? Hit him hard and kill him, because all the suffering that humanity has been going through for centuries and centuries is the responsibility of the God who created man, who created the world.

What was the need? Existence was perfectly silent and beautiful. What was the need to create Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane, and Nadirshah? Just between these three, they killed one hundred million people.

What was the need to create Adolf Hitler? And strangely enough, he killed God's chosen people: six million Jews in Germany! And he himself proclaimed that he was the reincarnation of a Jewish prophet, Elijah.

Strange... a Jewish prophet killing six million Jews? He should have killed Germans. But the problem was, he had the same stupid idea: that the Nordic German race is the superiormost race; it is born just to conquer the world. Other races are subhuman. That was the clash. Two 'chosen' races cannot live together. Their egos continuously get into conflict.

All these religions say there is only one God -- and one God creates three hundred religions just to fight with each other? This God must be mad, if he exists at all.

I feel it is better that we should trust Friedrich Nietzsche's declaration that he is dead, because to be dead is better than to be mad. At least you died in full sanity.

My feeling is he committed suicide, seeing the situation and what a mess he had created.

In India, God created the world -- this is specially for the self-styled, cultured city of Poona. God created the world, and the first thing he created was a woman. The woman that he created was his daughter, but he became infatuated; he wanted to rape his own daughter.

The woman became so afraid that she ran away and became a cow. Many women do that, it is nothing special. God, seeing that the woman had become a cow, immediately became a bull! And this is how the woman went on slipping from one body into another body, and God went on running after her, becoming another male of another species. That's how all the species were created. This is the great religion of the Hindus -- a cultured race, the most ancient religious people of the world.

Even their God is a gunda, a hooligan, a rapist -- and they call themselves cultured. These self-styled, so-called cultured people should look into their own scriptures, and they will be surprised.

One of their reincarnations of God is Parashuram, perhaps the most violent man in the whole history of mankind. His father was a Hindu seer -- I sometimes beat my head: a Hindu seer, and in his old age still jealous about his beautiful wife.

There is no evidence for it, but the Hindus believe that the moon is a god, the sun is a god.

The old seer, the father of Parashuram... I don't know what his original name was, because parshu is a special kind of sword, very heavy, not as long as a sword, almost half the size, but broad enough. A single blow... it is so heavy that a single blow is enough to take your head off. I don't know what his original name was, but because he continuously carried a parshu, he became Parashuram.

His father one day called him, saying, "I suspect your mother. She is having a love affair with the god of the moon. When I go to take my bath early in the morning at three o'clock, the moon comes and makes love to your mother. I cannot tolerate it. I have always found whenever I go to the river, the moon hides in the clouds. I know perfectly well where he has gone."

Is it just idiots that you call seers? -- they don't even know that if a moon falls in love with a woman, the woman will be finished. You will not find even a fragment of the woman. It is so big -- it is one eighth of the planet earth -- that no woman can make love to one that size. How is she going to find where his mouth is? where his hands are? And how can the moon enter in the small hut of the Hindu seer?

But still nobody has condemned Parashuram's father, that he was a blind man, utterly blind -- and you call him a seer? He was so blind with jealousy, so enraged that he was almost insane. The reality was that he had married a young woman, very beautiful, and he was old and finished.

He ordered Parashuram, "You go, this is the order of your father" -- and obedience is the greatest religion -- "cut the head of your mother and bring it before me."

Parashuram is thought to be one of the reincarnations of God, and even he could not see that it was all nonsense. "How can the moon come when I am always here? You go to the river, and if the moon comes I will chop his head." But he did not say anything. He simply went inside the hut and cut the head of the poor woman and brought it.

The father was absolutely satisfied. And because he obediently went -- even to cut the head of the mother, without even asking a single question -- Hindus have accepted him as one of the incarnations of God, pure obedience.

Pure obedience, or pure slavery?

Pure obedience, or pure stupidity?

And because the moon and the sun are thought by the Hindus, to belong to the race of the kshatriyas, the warriors -- Hindus cannot think without bringing in their caste system -- so the surya, the sun, and the moon are both warriors, kshatriyas, lower than the brahmins. Parashuram was a brahmin, and he was so angry with the moon that he decided to kill all the warriors of the country. And this man is thought to be an incarnation of God. What did the other warriors of the country have to do with his mother, or his father?

And the strangest story is... He was a man of tremendous power. Sixteen times he destroyed the whole race of the warriors of this country. His whole life was wasted in killing and killing, continuously killing single-handedly sixteen times.

From where then have the kshatriyas come? He has destroyed them all sixteen times. Do you need to destroy them sixteen times? One time would have been enough: all the kshatriyas are killed. How do you manage to get them killed sixteen times? That is another vulgar story of Hinduism.

Hinduism allows its seers... On the one hand they are talking about celibacy, promoting celibacy as the highest religion, and on the other hand they allow the seers, the great saints: "If any woman comes to you and asks for a child from you, you cannot refuse."

That's how... because Parashuram did not kill the women. The seers must have been having a jolly good life! Thousands of women, wives of kings, daughters of kings were coming to them on their own accord, praying to be given a child by them.

What kind of seers...?

These seers seem to be male prostitutes, and they are giving free service to all and sundry. The country is so big. Parashuram may be killing in the south; in the north new children are born. By the time he is finished in the south, again a new race of warriors has arisen. By the time he finishes the north, the east, the west, his whole life... And there were so many seers, and perhaps many were pretending to be seers. Such a good chance!

These vulgarities, these obscenities nobody mentions, because they will destroy the ego of the country, that this is the country of the pious, of the spiritual, of the religious. Can you think that these seers can be called seers, they have seen the truth, they have become awakened? And Parashuram himself is the most unconscious human being. Without any reason, just because the Hindus believe that the moon is a warrior, all warriors should be killed. And he must have made the whole country into a whorehouse, but still he is recognized as one of the incarnations of God.

In India, for almost ten thousand years... That is the calculation of the modern scientists.

Christians never believed in ten thousand years because of their Bible; their Bible says God created the world only four thousand years before Jesus was born. That means only six thousand years from this moment. So everything has to be put in the framework of six thousand years. They decided that the Rigveda was written five thousand years ago; they cannot go beyond that.

But scholars have found that the Rigveda was written ninety thousand years ago -- with solid evidence, which cannot be argued against. The Rigveda describes a certain constellation of the stars which only happened ninety thousand years ago. Unless the people who had been writing the Rigveda had seen the constellation -- it has not happened again... It is absolutely certain that these people watched the constellation, and they have described it in minute detail in the Rigveda. But ninety thousand years is a long story and nothing is written about it.

Most probably satipratha -- when a husband dies the wife should also jump in the funeral pyre -- is as old as the Rigveda. If the Rigveda is five thousand years old, then satipratha is five thousand years old; if it is ninety thousand years old, sati is ninety thousand years old. In ninety thousand years, how many million women -- sometimes very young, just married a week before, or maybe a day before, even if the marriage is not consummated...? In India, even children used to be married -- even now they are married, against the constitution and the law -- even children who were in the mother's womb were married. Just two friends would decide that, "If my wife gets a boy and your wife gets a daughter, or vice versa, they will be married." This is decided. The marriage is final. You cannot send a one-day-old or a one-year-old girl to the husband's house, but she is married. The marriage may never be consummated. The girl may be five years old and the husband may die. In fact there was more possibility of dying than being alive.

In ancient India, up to the beginning of this century, out of ten boys, nine would die. And if you are marrying children -- the wife has not even seen her husband, but if he dies she has to jump in the funeral pyre.

I have been asking the shankaracharyas, the Hindu religious leaders, "If you think that it is a great spiritual phenomenon that the wife should die, should jump alive in the funeral pyre, why has no man done such a spiritual act?" Only women are to be spiritual, and men have to be bulls?

I have seen with my own eyes live women burning. It is such a horrible experience to see, because a living woman tries to run out of the funeral pyre -- she is alive -- and brahmins are standing all around with big torches to force her back into it. So that it is not seen, much purified butter, ghee, is poured on the funeral pyre. It becomes almost a cloud of smoke, and you cannot see what is happening inside the cloud. Inside the cloud of smoke are standing the priests with burning torches to push the woman back into the funeral pyre, and outside there is so much music, bands, noise, that nobody can hear the woman praying, screaming, shouting "Help me! Save me!" Nobody can hear. All around a ceremony is going on, because one woman has become spiritual.

I have been asking; nobody has answered me. I am perhaps the only man in the world who has not been answered on a single point.

I have been to so many shankaracharyas -- there are eight, one for each direction. "If spirituality is so easy, just jumping into a funeral pyre, why has not man attained such spirituality?" And they are dumb -- they don't have any answer. They have only one answer: to condemn me.

But the fact is clear, it is a male chauvinist country. All religions are male chauvinist, against women.

I have been in such horrible nightmarish situations. I have seen women burning and I have seen how they have managed it. One layer of great music, loud music; another layer, another circle inside it, with great reciting of Vedic scriptures; then the third layer, which is almost hidden in the cloud that the purified butter has produced -- the priests. Should I call them priests? -- they are the butchers. They are standing around the funeral pyre with burning torches forcing the woman who is running here and there, trying to find a way out. But there is no possibility.

This you call spirituality, forcibly killing a woman? But the reason is, man's possessiveness.

All religions are male chauvinistic, they are in favor of the man. The man wants to possess the wife while he is alive and he wants to possess her even when he is dead. He will not leave her alone to have some love affair with anybody else.

But as far as man is concerned, I have seen a wife burning on her funeral pyre and the husband talking with people: "Do you have some idea of where to find a beautiful girl? I want to marry again" -- just on the spot. They cannot even wait for two, three days. At least let the fire disappear, let the woman's body be burned completely. No, exactly at the funeral pyre, around it, people are sitting and discussing which girl will be suitable for the person. And the person may be old, it does not matter; a fifty-year-old may marry a girl of sixteen years of age.

The crimes against humanity are immense.

The crimes against nature... All the people who have been eating meat don't think for a single moment it is coming from a living being. Just for your taste you are ready to kill anybody. What is wrong about cannibals?

One man who was caught by cannibals but somehow escaped told me, "I had to eat breakfast because I am too thin. That's why I could manage to escape -- they were feeding me and preparing me." Unless he becomes fat enough, there is no point in making a soup of him. That gave him enough time, but meanwhile he had to eat human meat, human flesh, and he told me, "I hate to admit it, but I cannot resist telling you the truth: it is the most delicious thing in the world."

Just because it is delicious, will you start eating human beings?

Just because it is delicious, you have been eating all kinds of animals -- that's what the Bible allows you -- birds in the sky, fish in the waters, animals in the forests. You are the only king of this whole nature: conquer, eat, enjoy. Just destroying the animals...! Finally, man had to start eating fruits as well because there were not enough animals.

There was a stage when man was a hunter. There were no settlements, people were continuously moving wherever the animals were moving. The animals were escaping from human beings. But when they found a scarcity of animals they started eating fruits, they started cultivating. For cultivation they had to cut trees -- trees which grow in two hundred years or three hundred years. There are trees which take four thousand years to grow. They destroyed those beautiful species forever. And they continued to produce more and more population, and the need for more land forced them to cut more trees.

Without trees the oxygen layer on the earth has fallen very much. We are living on the minimum.

There are strange catastrophes which will be called "natural," but they are not natural. For example, in Nepal -- it is one of the poorest countries in the world -- they have sold their trees to the Soviet Union. Millions of trees have been cut, and the contract still remains intact for the coming thirty years. The Soviet Union does not use axes to cut the trees, it has very refined technology. In a day it can cut thousands of trees. Within seconds, trees which have grown in three hundred years will fall down. The whole of the Himalayas surrounding Nepal have become naked of foliage, and because of that... The Ganges used to flow slowly because there were so many trees; they were a kind of hindrance. The Ganges was coming slowly, slowly, slowly, to meet the ocean in Bangladesh. Now there are no trees, the floods come with such tremendous speed that this year three fourths of Bangladesh was flooded. It is also a poor country. Millions of people died. Millions of houses were simply washed into the ocean.

Now, Bangladesh cannot do anything, and if you ask Nepal, the king says, "My people are so poor. We don't have anything to sell. We have only trees, and I have to feed my people. It is not my problem what happens to Bangladesh."

Next year, perhaps the whole of Bangladesh will have gone into the ocean. And how long can Nepal live by selling its trees? In thirty years the Soviet Union will have taken every single tree out of Nepal. Then comes a great danger: if the eternal ice of the Himalayas starts melting. The trees were shading the snows from the sunrays -- thick trees, big trees -- and the snow in the Himalayas has never melted, it has been there since eternity. But now there are chances you will see a tremendous flood -- and there is no Noah's Ark available anymore.

If the Himalayas melt, all the oceans around the world will rise by up to forty feet.

Bombay will be drowned, New York will be drowned; they will all become ocean. Cars will not be of any help -- boats. You cannot survive if all the oceans rise forty feet higher -- and you will call it a "natural" catastrophe...?

I don't call it a natural catastrophe. I call it a man-manufactured catastrophe.

The religious leaders have not been doing anything to prevent all these catastrophes. The population goes on growing; lands become poorer and poorer because they have been cultivated for thousands of years and they have not been nourished.

I told you that just at the beginning of this century, nine children were dying out of ten.

Now the situation is just the opposite: one child dies out of ten, nine children go on living, because of medical facilities. We have disturbed the whole ecology of the earth.

Who is responsible?

Certainly religious people, who should have warned humanity not to increase the population... but they all are in favor of more population. Even Indian religious heads are against population control, because they need more and more members in their organizations, in their churches. They are not concerned at all about the whole planet earth getting destroyed by our own hands. And these so-called religious people are such a lying gang of criminals.

Just today I received my birth chart from one newspaper, VEER ARJUN. The astrologer is K. A. Dube Padmesh. From where has this man got it? I don't know my own birth chart. Nobody knows my birth chart. It has never been made. I was born in such a small village where there was no airport, no railway station, no buses reaching to the village, no roads -- just two hundred simple villagers living. There was not any astrologer to make my birth chart. From where these so-called religious people...?

Astrology is part of the Hindu religion. From their own imagination they managed to make my chart. I have come across many charts -- during these thirty years I have come across at least two dozen birth charts. They are invented by astrologers -- I don't know from where -- and then they interpret them. They invent the chart and then they interpret the chart. They don't even ask me. I don't have a birth chart.

But lying has penetrated the religious people so deeply and fundamentally.... What do the great stars have to do with an ordinary human being like me? All these stars are deciding my fate? I am not a puppet.

Once it happened in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan.... They used to have one of the very famous astrologers -- astrologer to the king of Rajasthan. I was staying with the king. He called his astrologer, because I had no birth chart. The astrologer said, "There is no problem. I will read your hands."

The king told me, "This is a very costly man, but I will pay, don't be worried."

I said, "No. Leave it up to me. Don't interfere, just keep quiet."

He used to get one thousand rupees for one reading. He did the reading and then he waited for the one thousand rupees.

I said, "You are a great man of predictions. You know everything, but you don't know I am not going to pay!"

He said, "What?"

I said, "Yes, you wasted my time. You have to pay me."

He said, "This is too much. If you don't want to pay it is okay, I will go. But you are asking me to pay...?"

I said, "You have been holding my hand. I don't allow anybody to hold my hand. You have been talking nonsense and wasting my time."

I told the king of Rajasthan, "Tell this man he should put one thousand rupees here."

The king said, "He is a poor brahmin. I will give you one thousand rupees."

I said, "It does not matter. Because money is money... you put one thousand rupees here."

The king had to put one thousand rupees. I returned it to him. I said, "I don't need it for the time being. Sometime I may need it -- with interest. You called this idiot and you told me, 'He is the great astrologer in my kingdom....'"

But religion has been lying in every possible way, exploiting people in every possible way. Unless religion dies, the true authentic religiousness cannot be born.

A little biographical note before I talk about the sutras Maneesha has brought. These sutras belong to the world of Zen. To me, Zen is the only authentic religiousness. It has nothing to do with Buddhism, it has nothing to do with Taoism. In fact it is a rebellion against the traditions of Buddhism and of Taoism. But it has carried the essential message of Buddha. It has discarded all that was mere commentary. It has cut all rubbish out of the way. It is the very essence of Buddha's experience -- and that is also the experience of Lao Tzu, of Tao.

Zen is paving the path for the future humanity of one religiousness.

Zen is the only authentic gold that has come out of the whole past of humanity.

My love for it is not in vain.

I am trying to help you understand Zen for a particular purpose -- because you are going to be the new man, you are going to create a new humanity, a new world, which essentially is growing towards buddhahood.

The buddha is nothing to do with Gautam the Buddha; the buddha is your very nature. It means, the awakening. You are unconscious. Deep underneath your unconsciousness there is hidden a flame of awareness, alertness. That flame is buddha-dharma, that is your very nature. You don't have to go anywhere to find it, you have to go inwards. No church, no organization, no religion... just a quality of religiousness.

And what is the quality of religiousness? The quality of religiousness is to be centered in your witnessing being. Out of that witnessing a great awareness arises in you; the spring comes to your life and thousands of flowers of compassion, of love, of blissfulness. All around the fragrance of the ultimate surrounds you.

This is a small biographical note about Fuketsu, a Zen master.

FUKETSU (WHO WAS BORN IN 896 AND DIED IN 973) FIRST STUDIED THE CONFUCIAN CLASSICS.

Confucius was not a religious man, Confucius was just a moralist. Confucius was just a parallel to Karl Marx. It is not a coincidence that China has turned communist, because Confucian ideology paved the way. All that matters is right manners, right morality, right etiquette; no mention of spirituality, only social behavior; no mention of your individual depth. Confucius was one of the most confused men that has been born in the world.

FUKETSU FIRST STUDIED THE CONFUCIAN CLASSICS, THEN BECAME A PRIEST. LATER HE LEARNED FROM KYOSEI, THE DISCIPLE OF SEPPO, AND THEN FINALLY HE WENT TO NAN IN -- one of the greatest Zen masters -- THROUGH WHOM HE REALIZED HIS ENLIGHTENMENT.

Studying Confucian classics, he must have understood that Confucius deals only with the outer world, society, social manners. "This is not my search; I want to know myself. I want to know what is my being, in what way my roots are connected with the cosmos; from where comes my life, and to where it goes; whether there is something more than the body and the materials that constitute the body-mind system, or there is nothing except this body, which will be put on a funeral pyre, or in a grave, and will disintegrate into the earth, into its basic elements."

I am reminded of a disciple of Confucius. He asked Confucius, "I have heard so much about Lao Tzu...." They were contemporaries. Sometimes it happens almost like a chain- reaction....

In China there was Confucius, a great thinker but materialist; Lao Tzu, a great buddha; Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu. In India there were Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, and six others whose scriptures have been burnt by the Hindus, whose statues have been destroyed; just their names remain in the words of Buddha, or in the words of Mahavira. At the same time, in Greece there were Socrates, Heraclitus, Dionysius, Diogenes. Suddenly the whole world was afire with a new insight.

Confucius' disciple asked him, "You must have heard about Lao Tzu. He talks about a space inside where there is only peace and nothing else, utter silence and no disturbance.

Will you teach me how to enter inside?"

Confucius was very angry. He said, "Stop all this nonsense. Learn the morality, the virtue, avoid the sins, behave like a gentleman. Learn the manners of the society. As far as your inner world is concerned, when you die you will have eternity for that in the grave. You can search and meditate and find what is inside. But right now, don't waste my time." That was his attitude.

But, by and by, many people talked about Lao Tzu. Finally Confucius gathered courage.

He was very much afraid, because the stories that he had heard about Lao Tzu were so strange: "The man can do anything. He rides on a buffalo, facing backwards -- a dangerous fellow."

But the more he wanted to avoid him, the more he became interested. That's how the human mind functions. Whatever you want to avoid you will come across again and again. You will become enchanted. Finally he decided to meet him.

Lao Tzu was not far away, just outside the capital in the mountains in a cave. Confucius went there. He stopped his disciples who had followed him outside the cave, because he was afraid: "That man can do anything. He may hit me, and I don't want my disciples to see what happens to me." He said, "I will tell you. First let me go and encounter that man."

Lao Tzu was sitting in the deep cave in darkness, very silently. He did not bother at all that Confucius had come. He did not say hello to him, he did not say, "Sit down, please."

He did not take any notice.

Confucius said, "This is strange. At least you should behave like a gentleman."

Lao Tzu said, "I thought that you would not have the guts to enter into my cave. Here we don't teach morality or gentlemanship. Here we teach how to die and get resurrected. Are you ready?" -- looking into his eyes -- and Lao Tzu pulled his sword.

Confucius said, "Please forgive me. I will never again come in your cave!" -- perspiring, and the cave was very cool.

He came out and he told his disciples, "This man is dangerous. He is a dragon. He would have killed me." He did not understand Lao Tzu at all. He was not talking about ordinary death, he was talking about the death of the ego. And unless the ego dies, you are not your authentic self, you are not your original face. Confucius missed.

Fuketsu must have understood that "These classics are not going to help me." He dropped Confucius and became a priest.

But becoming a priest, worshipping statues and doing rituals, does not help either. The statue is as much outside you as anybody else; it does not lead you inwards. All your prayers, all your rituals are based on a fundamental lie: the existence of God.

Finally he became disappointed with being a priest also. He came to Kyosei, a Zen master, the disciple of Seppo, another great Zen master.

Kyosei told him, "Nan In is still alive. When the great buddha is still alive, why bother about small people like me? I can teach you, I can help you, but my first help is: go to Nan In. I am just a small pond, he is the very ocean. You cannot see the further shore."

This is the beauty of Zen. No other religion will send anybody to another master. There is conflict, competition. Everybody wants to be the greatest one. If somebody has come, he will grab him, he will not allow him to go anywhere else. He will take a promise: "I surrender to you."

Zen never wants anybody to surrender. No contract!

Out of your freedom you come.

Out of your freedom you learn.

Out of your freedom you grow.

Out of your freedom is going to happen your enlightenment. This is not an exception, it is almost the rule. If a master looks into the eyes of a disciple, he can see who will be the right master for this man, and he will direct him to the right man.

And when a man like Nan In is alive, why not take the chance and the opportunity? It happens very rarely over the centuries. Centuries pass, then only you come across a man like Nan In.

SO HE WENT TO NAN IN, THROUGH WHOM HE REALIZED HIS ENLIGHTENMENT.

This is just a biographical note on Fuketsu.

HE STAYED WITH NAN IN FOR SIX YEARS, AND THEN BECAME HEAD OF THE TEMPLE AT MOUNT FUKETSU, WHERE HE REMAINED FOR SEVEN YEARS.

It has been a tradition in the past in Japan: if a master makes a temple on a mountain, and he is enlightened, the emperor names the mountain according to the name of the master.

Because Fuketsu has made a new monastery, a new opening, a new space for the seekers to come, the emperor of Japan named the mountain Fuketsu.

HE WAS RINZAI'S GREAT-GRANDSON IN THE DHARMA LINEAGE.

The sutra:

OUR

ONCE, A MONK ASKED FUKETSU, "WHAT IS THE BUDDHA?"

FUKETSU REPLIED, "THE BAMBOO WHIPS OF MOUNT JORIN."

You will be surprised by the answer, but what he is saying is not exactly what he means.

When he said, "THE BAMBOO WHIPS OF MOUNT JORIN" -- Mount Jorin was just in front of Mount Fuketsu -- at that moment a breeze must have passed through the bamboos on Mount Jorin and the bamboos must have been making sounds, whipping each other, dancing in the wind, in the sun.

At this moment, Fuketsu was asked by a monk, "WHAT IS THE BUDDHA?"

Fuketsu replied, "This very moment... to be alert and aware this very moment is to be a buddha.

Just see the bamboos whipping on Mount Jorin...."

Zen trusts only in this moment. Zen cannot talk about some Gautam the Buddha hundreds of years past. When the bamboo buddhas are dancing in the air, making great celebrating noises, it is enough to indicate to the reality, this moment. That was Buddha's essential message: to live in the moment, never in the past, never in the future. To live in the moment... and you have become a buddha. To be here and now, and you are a buddha.

ANOTHER MONK THEN ASKED, "WHAT IS THE BUDDHA?"

because he could not understand what was going on. The man was asking, "WHAT IS THE BUDDHA?" -- and you are talking about the bamboos.

So the other monk asked again, "WHAT IS THE BUDDHA?"

FUKETSU ANSWERED, "WHAT IS NOT THE BUDDHA?"

This is a tremendous answer:

"WHAT IS NOT THE BUDDHA?"

Buddha is the very nature of existence. From the smallest grassleaf to the biggest star, everything is intrinsically, potentially, a buddha.

Some buddhas are asleep, there is no harm in it.

Some buddhas have awakened, there is no glory in it.

Just take care, when you are a sleeping buddha -- don't snore, because that disturbs other sleeping buddhas. Not to disturb anybody, not to interfere in anybody's territory -- that is the only virtue I know of.

There is not much difference.... I was asleep yesterday, today I am awake. Today you are asleep, tomorrow you may be awake -- or perhaps today.

The buddha is our intrinsic nature, hence Fuketsu has made one of the most significant statements:

"WHAT IS NOT THE BUDDHA? You tell me.

"You ask me, What is the buddha? Are you mad? Life itself is buddha. Existence itself is buddha."

Yes, buddhas are found in two categories: a few are asleep, may be tired, tired of many many life circles, many many births, many many deaths, resting. But a few have rested enough. They are tired of rest, so they get up. But there is no essential difference: buddha awake, buddha asleep -- both are buddhas.

Neither can sleep disturb your nature, nor can awakening enhance your nature. Yes, asleep you don't know who you are; awake, not only do you know who you are, you know the whole existence, its intrinsic quality -- that of buddhahood. Once you become a buddha, suddenly the whole existence is a fire of awareness.

Great is the answer of Fuketsu:

"WHAT IS NOT THE BUDDHA?"

A THIRD MONK SAID TO FUKETSU, "THE WESTERN PATRIARCH CAME BRINGING HIS MESSAGE; I ASK YOU TO TELL ME IT POINT-BLANK!"

He is asking about Bodhidharma. That is a constant question in the Zen world: Why has Bodhidharma come from India to China? What was his message?

AT THIS, FUKETSU REPLIED, "WHEN ONE DOG BARKS AT NOTHING, A THOUSAND MONKEYS REALLY SHOW THEIR TEETH."

A strange answer, but significant. He is saying, "Why are you bothered about these things? Bodhidharma came to China to bark!"

All the buddhas are doing exactly that: barking at sleeping people. Sleeping people means monkeys.

"WHEN ONE DOG BARKS AT NOTHING..."

You must have seen dogs barking at nothing -- great buddhas! Buddha's only message is nothingness, or, more point-blank, no-thingness. You are not a thing, you are not a commodity. You are beyond thingness. You are a light unto yourself.

"WHEN ONE DOG BARKS AT NOTHING..."

Remember clearly that Zen accepts that dogs have as much buddha-nature as you have.

Every living being... the very life is essentially hiding the buddha in itself.

"WHEN ONE DOG BARKS AT NOTHING, A THOUSAND MONKEYS REALLY SHOW THEIR TEETH."

When one Bodhidharma comes to China and barks, thousands of monkeys become Buddhists -- but they have not understood the message. They laughed at Bodhidharma's barking at nothing; they enjoyed. For them, entertainment is enlightenment. Monkeys are after all monkeys.

But what he is saying, he is saying about humanity. If you are not a buddha, forget all about humanity. Of course you have the body of the human being, but inside, look at your mind -- it is a monkey.

Only a buddha stops the monkey completely. Only a buddha lives in no-mind. And no- mind makes you authentically human, authentically existential, authentically part of the cosmos, of eternity. You disappear in the ocean of existence, and that is the greatest blessing, the greatest ecstasy.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION A MONK ASKED, "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF BODHIDHARMA'S COMING FROM THE WEST?"

The same question.

FUKETSU SAID, "WE KNOW ALL THE WINDINGS OF THE MOUNTAIN STREAM, BUT NOT THE MOUNTAIN ITSELF."

You have to note the fact. You can put the same question to the same master again and again, but you will never get the same answer again. A master responds to the moment spontaneously, he does not repeat from memory. His response is so pure....

Everything goes on changing, but your reaction remains the same. Response goes on changing with the changing flux of existence.

A master never reacts, he only responds.

So the question is the same, but Fuketsu's answer is totally different.

He says, "WE KNOW ALL THE WINDINGS OF THE MOUNTAIN STREAM..."

He is sitting on Mount Fuketsu, and a mountain stream is winding around the mountain.

It is a present moment. He shows the questioner, "WE KNOW ALL THE WINDINGS OF THE MOUNTAIN STREAM, BUT NOT THE MOUNTAIN ITSELF.

To know the mountain you will have to become the mountain. To know Bodhidharma you will have to become a Bodhidharma. There is no other way.

To know the Buddha you have to become a buddha. Being a Buddhist, you are monkeying, you are imitating. Monkeys are very great as far as imitation is concerned.

All the so-called religions are full of monkeys.

Christians are repeating Jesus; their famous classic is IMITATION OF CHRIST. Nobody thinks that 'imitation' is an ugly word. It is a very cherished classic of Christianity.

Buddhists are trying -- imitating -- to be a Buddha. But by imitating you can act like a buddha, but you cannot be a buddha.

If you want to be a buddha, forget all about Buddhas and Christs and Krishnas. Just be yourself, enter into yourself, and you will find the buddha -- not by being a Buddhist, but by just finding your authenticity, your innermost center. Don't be a monkey, ever.

I am reminded of a beautiful story.

A man used to sell Gandhi caps. Particularly at election time in India, Gandhi caps are very much in need. Everybody wants to prove that he is a Gandhian. The Gandhi cap is like a flag, showing to everybody that "I am a Gandhian. Vote for me."

A man used to make Gandhi caps for the election time, and he used to go from market to market selling the caps. It was a good business. The caps were in great demand.

One day, he was so tired coming back home. He himself was wearing a Gandhi cap, and in his bag he still had many caps left. He was thinking to go to another marketplace, but he was so tired that under a huge bodhi tree, the same tree under which Buddha became enlightened... That's why that tree is called a bodhi tree. It is named after Buddha. Bodhi means enlightenment.

It is a strange tree amongst all the trees; it can grow as huge as you want. Its branches after a certain length become so heavy they drop down. Because their weight is so great, to protect themselves the branches send new roots to the earth. When the new roots reach the earth, they have a new support. And each branch goes on sending new roots, so there are huge bodhi trees.

One exists in Adyar in the theosophical movement's world headquarters. It is so huge that ten thousand people can sit under it. The Theosophists used to have their meetings under the bodhi tree.

The man did not look at the tree, but it was full of monkeys. He was so tired, he just put his bag by his side and went to sleep. The monkeys watched. They could not resist the temptation of having a Gandhi cap. They came closer and they found that the man was fast asleep, so they pulled the bag open. Every monkey got one cap; only one monkey remained.

When the man had rested, he looked around. His bag was empty, and he could not see anybody. Then the monkeys started giggling. He looked up. He said, "My God! So many Gandhians! Now what to do?" Then suddenly he remembered that monkeys are imitators.

So he took off his cap and threw it. All the monkeys took their caps off and threw them.

He collected the caps and went back home.

The next year he fell sick at the time of the elections. He had prepared caps so he told his son to go to the marketplaces: "But remember one thing. There is on the way a very huge bodhi tree which is full of monkeys. And the shade is so cool... after miles of walking, one feels to rest. So I will tell you my experience, otherwise you will be in trouble. If it happens to you, remember, don't be worried: monkeys are imitators.

"If you want to sleep, go to sleep. If the monkeys take the caps, let them enjoy for a moment. When you wake up, don't be worried, just throw your cap and they will all throw their caps. Collect the caps and go home."

The boy said, "That's great." In fact, he was looking forward to enjoying the great moment.

Before going to the market -- the father had rested when he was coming back -- the boy thought, "Why not rest now and enjoy and then go to the market?" So with the full bag, he went to sleep. The monkeys came down, and when he woke up they were all wearing the caps.

The boy looked up. They all giggled. The boy knew the trick; he threw his cap. No monkey threw his cap; on the contrary, one monkey who had not got a cap came down and took his cap and went back up.

Not only had the boy's father told him, the monkeys had also been told by their fathers, "If such a thing happens, don't be deceived."

Basho wrote:

TEMPLE BELLS DIE OUT....

Have you ever listened to the temple bells slowly slowly dying out? The sound becomes less and less and less, or the echo in the valleys goes on dying, and then comes a great silence, greater than it was before the bells were rung.

TEMPLE BELLS DIE OUT.

THE FRAGRANT BLOSSOMS REMAIN -- A PERFECT EVENING!

Basho writes with such a golden touch.

You can see it exactly! You can hear the bell ringing and dying into deep silence. You can see the blossoms still remain, and the fragrance.

The silence deepens, the fragrance deepens... a perfect evening.

Haikus are, as I have told you, word pictures. Without painting, just through words, the haiku paints a picture, a very living picture. With paints the picture is dead. The poet's great art consists in painting a picture that will remain alive forever.

TEMPLE BELLS DIE OUT. THE FRAGRANT BLOSSOMS REMAIN -- A PERFECT EVENING!

Question 1:

Maneesha has asked a question:

Maneesha, both the things function together.

The magnet of your buddhahood pulls you inwards, and the thirst that is created out of disappointments in life makes you ready to search. You have looked all around and have not found anything. You have been thirsty, and thirsty, and thirsty, and everything has failed, all promises are broken.

Then a moment comes, you start looking inwards. "You have looked outside enough, just give a chance to the inner" -- that idea arises automatically, and there is your innate buddha pulling you. And once you look inside, both start functioning together, moving closer to each other. Halfway they meet.

A Sufi saying is, "If you take one step towards truth, truth takes one thousand steps towards you."

No other dynamics is needed. All that is needed is a clarity about disappointment in the outside world, and an intelligence to remind you that you have not searched inwards. Just these two things are needed. A thirsty inquiry, and the buddha is sitting there like a great magnet pulling you towards him and also moving closer to you. The meeting is always in the middle.

I help you to go inside in search of your inner center. That is the center where you will meet the buddha. He will come out from the hidden treasure of your being to welcome you at the gate. The center of your being is the gate of the cosmos.

It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. In fact, it is late!

Father Fungus has accumulated a huge gambling debt and needs some money fast. He has a bright idea for solving his problem. He wires up all the church seats with electricity.

The next Sunday, Father Fungus is blasting out his sermon when he stops and shouts, "All those who will give one hundred dollars towards the church charity fund, stand up!"

Fungus touches a button and twenty people spring to their feet.

"Good!" says Father Fungus. "Now, all those who want to give five hundred dollars, stand up!"

He touches another button and twenty more jump to their feet.

"Excellent!" says Fungus. "Now, all those who will give a thousand dollars, stand up!"

He throws the master switch, and fifteen visiting Scotsmen are electrocuted to death!

Father Fumble is visiting his central Oregonian flock and comes to the Sheep-Shaggers'

farm near Fossil. He sees little Becky, the Sheep-Shaggers' daughter, playing in the front yard and goes over for a chat.

"Hello, my child," says Father Fumble. "May I speak to your father?"

"No," replies Becky, shaking her head. "He's in jail for molesting sheep."

"Really?" exclaims Father Fumble. "Then may I speak to your mother?"

"No," replies Becky, shaking her head. "She has been taken to the funny farm. She was talking to sheep."

"Really?" exclaims Fumble. "Then may I speak to your brother?"

"No," replies Becky. "He is at the university."

"How nice!" exclaims Fumble. "What is he studying?"

"He ain't studying nothing," replies Becky. "They are studying him!"

Muffin Snuffler, the White House cleaner, is polishing the floor in the Oval Office one day, when he looks up at George Washington's portrait and sees the lips moving.

Shocked and a little frightened, Muffin edges closer to the portrait and listens to America's hero speak.

"Bring me a horse!" commands Washington. "I am going to put this country in order!"

Muffin races out of the office and bumps straight into President George Bush. "Mister President, sir," he screams, "George Washington's portrait just spoke to me!"

"Don't be an idiot!" snaps Bush. "Pictures don't talk!" And he walks into the Oval Office and over to the painting. But before he reaches it, George Washington speaks again, "Hey, Muffin!" shouts Washington, "I told you to bring me a horse -- not a donkey!"

Nivedano...

(drumbeat) (gibberish) Nivedano...

(drumbeat) Be silent...

Close your eyes...

Feel your bodies to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to look inwards, with your total life energy, with your total consciousness, and with an urgency as if this is the last moment of your life.

Go as forcibly towards the center as an arrow, piercing all the layers of the body, mind, astral body.

Just go to the center.

As you come closer to the center, you are closer to the buddha.

As you come deeper into yourself, you are approaching your very being.

The moment you reach to the center, a great meeting happens.

You and buddha merge into each other, just as two lights merge into each other, and a great silence descends, and a tremendous joy arises in you.

Remember only one quality that buddha has. That quality is witnessing.

Whatever is happening, just be a witness, don't be identified.

You are not the body, you are not the mind, you are not the astral body.

You are not the silence, you are not all those flowers that are showering on you.

You are only a witness.

The witness is the very being of a buddha.

At this moment I am facing ten thousand buddhas.

Nivedano...

(drumbeat) Help them to relax.

But remember to witness everything that is happening within you. Slowly slowly, you will feel a tremendous melting into the ocean of consciousness that surrounds you. Ten thousand buddhas are melting into an ocean of consciousness without any ripples.

Rejoice, cherish, this is the greatest moment of your life. You are the most fortunate people on the earth at this moment.

Collect as much fragrance of the inner, as many flowers of the invisible, as much juice of infinity, of the eternal, as much dance of existence as possible.

Nivedano...

(drumbeat) Come back, but come back as buddhas, with great peace, silence, grace.

Sit down for a few moments just to remember the golden path that you have traveled.

And just watch: every day the distance between you and the buddha is becoming less and less.

The day your center and your circumference become one, the day your day-to-day life is also an expression of your buddhahood -- carrying water from the well, chopping wood for the winter -- you will be a buddha in your meditation, you will be a buddha in all your activities. That day will be the greatest day in your millions of lives. That day you will be awakened from a coma, from a deep deep sleep for the first time.

For the first time you will know the beauty of existence, its truth, its splendor. Then all that remains for you is to share -- share your joy, your ecstasy, with friends, with strangers.

Except the whole earth becomes filled with this festival of being a buddha, there is no hope for man.

But I trust in the intelligence of existence. You simply spread the fragrance. It will become a wildfire around the earth.

One single seed can make the whole earth green.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.