Sun and moon in one's sleeve

Maneesha, the understanding of mind ultimately ends in the understanding of meditation. The function of the mind is to divide things. Duality is its territory: darkness and light, life and death. The mind cannot conceive anything which has not its opposite.

But existence is not obliged to function according to the mind. In existence day and night merge into each other, every evening, every morning. They are not separate. Neither are life and death separate. If they were separate it would be possible for someone to go on living, and not to allow death to enter into his house.

An ancient Chinese story will help you to understand the great Zen master Eno. His every statement is a scripture in itself.

The ancient story is that a great emperor, being afraid of death, created a palace with a single door. No other doors, no other windows, no way of entering into the palace except from one small door where he had placed a complete row of guards. Guard number one was to be guarded by number two, and guard number two was guarded by number three, and guard number three was guarded by number four ... seven guards watching each other! More protection is not possible.

A neighboring king heard about it, and he wanted to see this most secure palace. He was welcomed. The owner of the palace took him in, showed him all the facilities inside, that there was no way for any enemy, for any thief, for any killer to enter.

The king was very much impressed. He said, "I will immediately order the same. Just give me the names of the architects, to make the same palace for me in my kingdom."

Talking with each other, they came out to where the chariot of the king was waiting. And when he said, "I'm going to make exactly the same palace. I loved it, the very idea. It is so safe and secure ..." a beggar by the side of the road started laughing madly.

Both were stunned. For a moment there was silence.

They both asked the beggar, "Why are you laughing?"

He said, "I'm laughing because there is a loophole in all this, and I know the loophole. I have been sitting in this place for years, begging, so I have been watching the building of the palace."

The emperor asked, "What is the loophole?"

He said, "That one door!"

The emperor laughed. He said, "I have placed seven guards on it. They are guarding on each other, nobody can betray. What is the fear?"

The beggar said, "With due respect, I want to tell you that death will enter and your guards will not be able to see it. And death is the only insecurity. What else? Do you have any protection against death?"

The emperor was at a loss.

The beggar said, "My suggestion is that if you want really to be secure, tell your builders to raise a wall in place of that door! I still cannot guarantee that death will not enter -- but at least you have made as much effort as possible; close the door and be inside."

The emperor said, "But that means I'm already dead! It becomes a grave, not a palace, if I cannot come out."

The beggar said, "If you think just by closing one door your life will be finished, don't you think that by closing other doors, parts of your life are finished? By closing the windows, other parts of your life are finished? You are going to live at the minimum, while the maximum was available."

Both the kings were surprised to see the intelligence of the beggar. They came close to him and they asked him, "From where have you come?"

He said, "You will not understand. Your fathers were my friends. Once I also used to be an emperor. But seeing the whole unnecessary trouble, I made myself completely secure -- I dropped all walls, all worries, opened all windows. Now for almost half a century nobody has harmed me. I'm just a beggar -- why should anyone harm me? I have nothing to be stolen. I sleep as I have never slept before."

If you really want to be living at the maximum, don't listen to the duality of the mind.

The only security in existence is going beyond the mind.

The beggar was a great Taoist master. His name was Lieh Tzu. But people had forgotten that fifty years before he had dropped his kingdom.

He said, "The only security I have found is in being silent, in being myself, where all duality disappears. Where you and the universe are one, then death cannot do anything."

You have disappeared on your own accord; now there is no way to harm you. There is nobody to harm you. The body is not you, the mind is not you. You are just a guest in a house. Don't get identified with the house, just remember the guest.

This statement of Eno is tremendously beautiful:

But all the so-called intelligent people of the world have taken them as two things. Meditation is for the mystics and wisdom comes from accumulating knowledge from the scriptures, from the old traditions. They have degraded wisdom to knowledge -- borrowed knowledge.

Eno is saying that wisdom is the fragrance of meditation; they are not separable. You cannot have wisdom without meditation and you cannot have meditation without wisdom. In fact, they are two names for one phenomenon.

To be yourself, silently and fully aware, is to know without any doubt that meditation and wisdom are one.

Meditation is the source and wisdom is the radiation. Meditation is your understanding and wisdom is your action according to that understanding. Meditation is your inner experience and wisdom is its outer expression.

A man of meditation cannot do anything wrong. And a man of so-called wisdom alone is just a parrot. He goes on repeating, but his heart is not touched by his own repetitions.

A priest had two parrots. They were very good, saintly, with their rosaries in their hands, repeating Ave Maria. But once in a while they would become very sad, both of them at the same time. So he thought perhaps they needed a companion.

He went to the pet shop, thinking certainly they need a companion, because both are male; they need a female at least to share with. So he bought a female, and as he put the female

parrot into their cage, one parrot said to the other, "Johnny, now drop the rosary! There is no need of it, our prayers have been heard!"

The priest could not believe that these idiots had been praying for their own reasons, not for the Christian religion. They both dropped their rosaries.

A man who thinks that through borrowed knowledge he is wise, is not only befooling himself but others also. His wisdom is just a memory, not a knowing, because knowing blossoms only through meditation.

Eno says:

Eno is making a significant statement. You are standing on a road -- inwards is the realm of meditation. And if you reach to the point where you touch your very being, then outwardly you can express your meditation in everything that you do. All your gestures, all your actions, even your silences -- not doing anything, just sitting -- will also express the radiance, the fragrance, the beauty, the joy of meditation. This is wisdom.

But people have been misled by parents, by teachers, by priests, by everyone, to accumulate wisdom. You can accumulate great wisdom and yet you will be just a learned idiot. Your behavior will show it, your actions will show it; just your words will be in consonance with the scriptures.

The authentic wisdom does not come from outside. The authentic wisdom comes when you have gone deeper into your being and found the center of your life -- then suddenly an explosion. Everything that you do or don't do expresses your wisdom.

Wisdom is just the fragrance of a rose. Find the rose first and the fragrance will be found on its own accord. Don't even make the distinction of which comes first, because they are not two. They are one, looked at from two sides -- one from inside and one from outside. Whatever is your enlightenment expresses itself inside as meditation, and outside as wisdom. Neither comes first, they are one. The outer and the inner both are together.

But mind always creates distinctions, separations. And it is because of the mind that you get into unnecessary troubles: philosophic conflicts, theological arguments. You waste your time on books looking for something that may help you to find yourself.

You cannot find, anywhere, anything that will help you to find yourself. You have to be clear about it: you are not to be found, you are already here. You have just to recognize the fact.

A master does not teach you to be yourself; he simply makes you recognize what is hidden behind your heartbeat. In his presence a certain synchronicity happens. You simply be close to a master, silently, and you start feeling a rush of energy flowing towards you, making you afire. It is invisible to the spectators; only the participants are the blessed ones.

Once you know yourself, you are in meditation and your actions will show wisdom.

A Zen poet wrote:

And his haiku is complete. Just remember one hand, just remember one sleeve.

When you open your hand, don't you have the whole universe in your palm? Just don't close it. The closed hand is the poorest; it has nothing in it.

It is a strange thing, that every child is born with a closed hand, and everybody dies with an open hand. It has never been heard of that anybody has died with a closed hand, because to close the hand you need energy. The open hand needs no energy, no tension. A closed hand will get tired. The dying man cannot afford the energy to close his fist.

But it is beautiful to go deeper into the question of why every child is born with closed hands. It signifies that every child is born with great hopes and expectations and desires. Those closed hands are showing that he has to make something of himself -- to be successful, rich, politically powerful. It is an unconscious, very deep-rooted expression of his being. He comes into the world with great secrets; soon he will start getting frustrated. No success succeeds.

In fact, every success ends up in failure, in a deep frustration, because what you wanted is not found.

The old man dying has nothing to hold on to. No desire, no expectation ... he moves into death just like a beggar.

When Alexander the Great died, he told his ministers, "Keep my hands hanging outside of the coffin."

They said, "Strange idea!" It had never been heard of. Nobody had done it. A dead man should behave and keep his hands inside the coffin.

But Alexander said, "It is my order and it has to be fulfilled! It is my last wish. It does not matter that nobody else has done it; it's going to be done to me. Keep my hands hanging outside the casket!"

They said, "But why this idea?"

Alexander said, "Millions of people will come to see. I want to make it clear to them that I had come into the world with closed fists, with great expectations, with great secret desires -- I am going from the world utterly frustrated, with open hands. I'm not taking anything with me. All that I had has proved to be just a delusion."

Meditation makes you an open hand. Mind is very secretive; mind goes on keeping your desires, your angers, your frustrations, your miseries, all secret -- a closed fist. Meditation is an opening of the fist. And then the whole universe is in your hands. A small haiku with a great meaning ...

Ikkyu wrote:

You can go on searching not only the whole night but the whole life of unconsciousness and darkness, searching for Buddha. You will always end up with your mind.

You will not find the buddha because the buddha is not to be found by searching. The buddha has to be simply recognized. Without making any effort to seek and search, just look in. You are the buddha.

And immediately all your actions, all your ways of life, all your functions, will change -- immediately. They will all carry the fragrance of a buddha.

Another haiku:

The light within you is perfect. You cannot take anything out of it, nor can you add anything to it. It is a perfect circle, it is a perfectly opened lotus. You cannot do anything to it; you can only rejoice. You can dance, you can sing a song, in praise of the lotus that has blossomed within your being.

Particularly, I want my people to know that meditation is not just being silent -- that is only one part of it. Finally, it has to be creative. And when a poetry comes out of your inner silences, or a painting, it has a flavor which is not of this world.

Question 1

Maneesha has asked:

Yes, Maneesha. There is nowhere to go. You are already there, where you needed to be. And once you recognize it, then you carry your consciousness wherever you go. Then time makes no difference, nor does space. You are a buddha in the temple and you are a buddha in the shop; you are a buddha sitting silently, deep in meditation, and you are a buddha having a good laugh with Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

It is midnight in Miami, and Glamorous Gladys arrives for a winter holiday to find that all the hotels are full.

The receptionist at the four-star Screwing Sands Hotel suggests that he can put her in to share a room with a nice man on the fifth floor, named Donald Dickstein.

Gladys likes the idea and takes the room.

She enters the room quietly, takes a peek, and sees Donald sleeping in one of the beds. Then she turns on the bathroom light, leaves the door open, and begins to slowly and seductively take off her dress.

Then she ever so slowly removes her bra. Bending in the light, she takes her sweet time slipping off her black lace panties.

Finally, she saunters around the room completely naked, and gets into her bed. Then she leans over and whispers to Donald, "Would you like to come in my bed?"

"No thanks," replies Donald, wide awake. "I've already come in mine!"

There is an explosion at a Polack salami factory, and one of the salamis gets blown right to heaven. It lands at Saint Peter's feet.

"What a funny-looking thing," says Saint Peter, picking it up. And he goes to show it to Jesus.

"Did you ever see such a thing?" Saint Peter asks Jesus.

"No," replies Jesus. "I've never seen one before." So, Saint Peter takes it to show to Mary.

"Mary," he asks, "did you ever see something like this?"

"Oh!" exclaims Mary. "You know, if it didn't have that funny smell, I would swear it was the Holy Ghost!"

Caroline Kratz goes to visit her local channeler to find out about her late husband, Caruso.

"What's it like up there?" asks Caroline, anxiously, when she gets the right channel.

"Marvellous!" replies Caruso. "I get up late, go swimming, then have sex, sleep, eat, take a rest, go swimming, have sex, sleep, eat again, have sex ..."

"Ah!" cries Caroline, "but down here you only made love to me once a month!"

"I know," admits Caruso, "but down there I was not a duck!"

Old Rubenstein is passing the local pet shop one day, when he sees a sign advertising a parrot that can speak many languages.

Since he considers himself an expert on languages, Rubenstein goes inside and starts to question the parrot.

"Parlez-vous francais?" asks Rubenstein.

"Parlez-vous francais?" replies the parrot.

"Habla espanol?" asks the old Jew.

"Habla espanol?" comes the reply.

"Speak English?" asks Rubenstein.

"Speak English?" replies the bird.

Old Rubenstein goes closer to the parrot, and asks confidentially, "Tell me, my friend, if you are so smart, do you speak Yiddish?"

The parrot fixes Rubenstein with its beady eyes: "Tell me, my friend," says the bird, "you think I should not speak Yiddish with a nose like this?"

Okay, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent ...

Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be frozen.

Gather all your energy inside.

Deeper and deeper ...

Take this energy

to the very center of your being.

Your body is only a circumference.

Find the center of your consciousness.

Once you have found the center

of your consciousness,

you are a miracle, a buddha ...

the greatest mystery in existence.

Don't hesitate ...

Take the jump.

There is nothing to fear.

It is your own world.

Finding the center of your consciousness

is finding the center of the universe itself.

After that,

you exist spontaneously --

without any effort,

with great grace and bliss.

Meditation ultimately brings wisdom

to your life.

To make it absolutely clear that you are not the body, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax ... fall dead.

Collect yourself as deep

within your innermost core as possible ...

You are discovering the buddha ...

This moment is the most precious moment

when one discovers the buddha in oneself.

Then all theology and religion and philosophy

are just commentaries,

non-essential.

You have got the essential thing

right in your hands.

This buddha-nature knows no death, no birth --

it knows only eternity.

No beginning, no end.

No boundary.

It becomes oceanic ...

The whole universe becomes its home.

For the first time

there is not even a fence

between you and the universe.

You are the universe.

This is the meaning of finding the buddha.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back, slowly, silently, gracefully,

carrying the experience,

recollecting it.

Sit for a few moments as a buddha.

And carry out

your twenty-four-hour activities,

remembering that you are a buddha

and all your expressions should be of wisdom.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes, Beloved Master!