Zen: The Koan of Life

The first question

Question 1:

Samadhi,

Zen is not a religion, it is living life in its totality, herenow. Religions are always postponing life: they are giving you beautiful illusions about life somewhere in the future, far away, beyond death. That is a strategy to divert and distract you from the realities of life. That is pure cowardice. It is also a rationalization so that you can be consoled: "If life is miserable today there is nothing to be worried about, tomorrow everything is going to be well. In fact, to suffer life today is a preparation for enjoying life tomorrow, so the more you suffer the better. There is no reason to complain, no reason to rebel, no reason to revolt against all those things which are causing misery."

Religion protects the establishment and the vested interests. It is a very subtle strategy - so subtle that for thousands of years man has lived under its weight without ever becoming aware of what is being done to him. Karl Marx is almost right: that religion is nothing but opium for the people.

It keeps you drugged, it keeps you hoping, waiting - and the tomorrow never comes. Desiring, fantasizing about life after death is a sheer waste of time, energy, and also it keeps you stupid. Life is herenow - there is no other life. Life knows no past, no future, it knows only the present.

Zen is of tremendous importance. It is the greatest flowering of human consciousness yet achieved and it is one of the fundamental revolutions: it cuts the very roots of the so-called religious structure of the mind. It is not religion, it is pure religiousness. It is not religion in the sense of being Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Buddhist. Hence to call Zen "Zen Buddhism" is wrong: it has nothing to do with Buddhism at all. It is not oriented in the past, it is not inspired by the past - it has no goal in the future either - it is living your life passionately, intensely, ecstatically this very moment.

The very idea of this very moment is shattering to the mind because mind lives in the past and the future. And Zen is a tremendous blow to the mind: it cuts it in a single blow, it destroys it, it takes you beyond immediately. Zen is a device of sudden enlightenment.

Mind wants to be slow, gradual, it wants to move carefully, cautiously, guardedly, thinking about the pros and cons. Zen is a jump into the very thick of life. And life surrounds you within and without.

Just as a fish is in the ocean you are in life. Don't wait for the next moment, live it now. Zen is a challenge, a risk, a gamble: putting everything at stake for the moment.

The religious people cannot understand it - I mean the so-called religious. And the world is full of them: there are Christians, and there are Hindus, Mohammedans, Jews, Buddhists, and Jainas - these people cannot understand Zen at all. Unless you get rid of all these ideologies you will not understand what Zen is.

Zen is not an ideology, it is not a philosophy, it is living in an existential way, not in an intellectual way. Zen is not concerned with words, concepts, theories, hypotheses, assumptions, beliefs, its total concern is with the immediate reality. The reality has to be encountered without any barrier. Unless your whole mind is put aside you cannot understand Zen.

Samadhi, it certainly is full of zest, zip, zap and zing.

James Broughton has said: "Zen is another word for Zest. For zip and zap and zing. If you have no appetite for life as it is, and are not excited by the koan of what this here life is about, then Zen is not for you."

What I am doing here is pure Zen. I am helping you to get rid of your mind.

Mind has many characteristics, many aspects. And each religion has chosen one aspect of the mind and made much fuss about it, has dragged that aspect to its ultimate, logical conclusion. This is something to be very deeply understood because it is fundamental for the understanding of the Zen approach.

Ordinarily you think somebody is a Mohammedan and somebody is a Hindu and somebody is a Jaina. That's not really true. Every human being in his unconsciousness carries all these characteristics within him: he is a Hindu, he is a Mohammedan, he is a Christian, he is a Jaina, he is a Jew, he is a Buddhist. Of course, if he is born into a Buddhist family then the Buddhist aspect surfaces, becomes too big, too overwhelming, and the other aspects of the mind are repressed, are covered up. If he is born into a Mohammedan family another aspect of the mind becomes prominent.

But the others are always present there, and they go on working from your deep unconscious .

So as I see it, each person has all these religions in him. That's why you can find people who can create a synthesis out of all these religions. That synthesis has no value; it simply shows that they are trying to correlate all the aspects of their minds.

For example, every person is egoistic, but Hinduism has developed that egoism to its ultimate flowering of "holier than thou". Every Hindu believes he is born to teach the whole world, he is born with a special message from God. He inherits the real religion, the true religion, sanantan dharma, the eternal religion. And he thinks that he is tolerant, that he is accepting, that he is not a fanatic, that he is not in any way trying to interfere in anybody's life. In fact, he is doing all these things, but in a very subtle way.

Hindus are very intolerant. Even the idea that they are tolerant shows their intolerance. Why should you think yourself tolerant if you are not intolerant?

I have never thought that I am tolerant. Why should I think of tolerance at all? If the intolerance is not there somewhere in the unconscious then tolerance is not needed, you are simply yourself. But this idea of "holier than thou", this holy ego is the basic characteristic of the Hindu mind.

But it is not just in the Hindu mind; it permeates all the religions in different ways. The Jews think they are the chosen people of God. The Christians think that Jesus is the only-begotten son of God and there are his followers, and at the time, the ultimate time of the Judgement Day, Jesus will separate his flock, his sheep, from the others, and only his sheep will be saved - the others will be thrown into hellfire.

And the same is true of the Mohammedans, and the same is true of the Jainas and the Buddhists and the Confucians and the Taoists and the Sikhs. Everybody has that idea somewhere. So it is nothing special to the Hindus, but they have developed it, refined it, cultivated it, made it look very beautiful: they have decorated it.

The Mohammedan is basically fanatic, utterly fanatic - he has developed that aspect of the mind.

Every mind is fanatic: if you are living in the mind you cannot go beyond fanaticism. But the Mohammedan has developed it to its highest peak. His religion is the latest arrival on the earth.

Mohammed is the last prophet. Now there is not going to be any other prophet; God has sent the last edition of his message. There have been other messages before, but they are all cancelled. The last message has come and it is so absolutely correct that there is no need for any other prophet to arrive on the earth again. This is pure fanaticism. But this is present in everybody.

I used to live with one of my professors. On a winter morning just like this, I was sitting in his garden reading a book. His old mother came out - very old, eighty years old, and she said, "What are you reading?" Just to annoy her I said, "The Koran."

That eighty-year-old woman suddenly snatched the book away from my hand, threw it outside the garden. Suddenly she became so young! It was beautiful to see her back in her youth. She was so ferocious. She said, "Don't bring the Koran into my house! We are pure brahmins. And if you want to read, can't you read the Bhagavad Gita? Can't you read the Vedas? We have thousands of scriptures, why read the Koran? Never again bring that book inside my house!"

Her son, my professor, ran from his room, came out: "What is happening?" And I told my professor, "Your mother is a Mohammedan." The mother looked at me, she said, "What do you mean? I, and a Mohammedan?"

I said, "Yes, because this is the characteristic of a Mohammedan, this fanaticism. And you are a fool too because that was the Bhagavad Gita!"

She rushed out, bowed down to the book, cleaned the book, brought it back and gave it to me, and said, "What kind of joke is this?" - trembling, shaken. I said, "This is the Koran, and you have bowed down to the Koran!"

This fanatic mind is there.

Caliph Omar reached Alexandria, and Alexandria had the greatest library in the world. It is said that it contained tremendous treasures from all the ancient civilizations which have disappeared - the Assyrian, the Babylonian, and even civilizations which have totally disappeared. Even their names have disappeared. It had all the scriptures belonging to the continent of Atlantis, which has gone down into the ocean - the whole continent has disappeared. Now it is the Atlantic Ocean, but once it was a great continent; one of the greatest civilizations flourished there.

Alexandria has never been surpassed as far as ancient scriptures are concerned.

Omar reached with a torch in his hand - a burning torch in one hand and the Koran in the other hand. And he said to the chief librarian, "I have to ask you two questions. First, is there anything more in this library, more than the Koran?" And before the librarian could answer, he himself said, "If there is more then I am going to burn this library, because the Koran is enough. Anything more than that is not needed. If it was needed in the first place it would have been in the Koran itself. So I am going to burn it. And the second question: Is there anything in this whole library but that which is written in the Koran itself?" And again before the librarian could answer he answered himself. He said, "If you say that this library simply repeats the Koran in different ways, then too I am going to burn it because it is not needed. The Koran is enough. Either way I am going to burn the library."

This is fanaticism. And he burned it. The library was so huge that it is said that it took six months for the library to be completely burnt. The fire was continued for six months in order to consume the library.

Compared to the library of Alexandria, that of the British Museum or the Library of Moscow are nothing. They are the Biggest libraries now. If the Library of Moscow were spread around the earth, if the books were arranged in a row, one book followed by another book just like on a shelf, all the books of the Moscow Library would go three times round the earth. But this is nothing compared to the library of Alexandria.

And the British Museum has even more books. They would go seven times around the earth. But it is said that even both libraries together are not comparable to the library of Alexandria. It contained the whole past. Now we know only two thousand years of history, but it contained at least one hundred thousand years of history. It was of immense value, but a fanatic burned it.

Mohammedanism has developed one characteristic of the mind. Each mind is fanatic. You want you to be right and the other to be wrong. You are always right and the other is always wrong. It is not a question of what you are right about; because it is you who believe in it, it has to be right. The fanatic is not logical, he is illogical. The fanatic is not ready to understand, he is a believer and his belief is absolute. He is not open, he is closed. And this is the characteristic of all minds.

The Jaina is a sado-masochist. And every mind is a sado-masochist. One enjoys torturing the body because the mind feels powerful. When you torture your body you enjoy that torture because your mind starts thinking, "Now I am the master and the body is the slave." That's what Jainism has been teaching: master your body. If the body asks for food, don't give it to the body. You are the master, you have to assert your mastery. So fasting became one of the most significant things in Jainism.

And the people who can fast for many days are thought to be great saints. They are simply torturing their bodies - they are mentally ill. When the body needs food, food has to be given to the body; the body is a temple - it has to be loved, respected. But Jainism has developed that characteristic to its omega point.

It exists in everybody. You also enjoy torturing your body in many ways, and you feel good when you succeed in torturing it. When you can force your body like a slave, like a machine, certainly the idea of power arises in y(3u that "I am powerful." When you cannot force it you feel very dull.

For example, if you want to stop smoking. It may be harmful to smoke, but you are enjoying it. It must be helping you in some way. It may be relaxing you in some way, it may be taking your mind away from your constant occupations, your worries, your anxieties. People smoke only when they are very tense. When they are not tense they don't tend to smoke. When they are tense they smoke.

If you don't smoke your tension goes on accumulating, which is far more dangerous than smoking.

Smoking is just stupid, not dangerous. Maybe you will live one or two years less - so what? What are you going to do even if you live two, three years more? If you have not done anything in seventy years, what are you hoping to do in those extra two years? You will go on doing the same nonsense, you will be living the same misery. So that is not the point. Whether you are healthy or unhealthy, a little bit unhealthy, does not matter much. In fact, it may prevent you from being a nuisance.

Just think: if Adolf Hitler had been a cripple or had amoebas or was continuously getting hepatitis, the world would have been saved. In fact, Adolf Hitler was against smoking, against alcohol. He was a pure vegetarian like Mahatma Gandhi.

In fact, both men have many things in common. Both believed in going early to bed and both believed in getting up early in the morning. Both believed that vegetarian food is great. Both believed that smoking is bad, alcohol is bad. Both were great saints. The only difference was that Mahatma Gandhi had the Jaina characteristic very much developed in him - he was only ten percent Hindu, ninety percent Jaina - so he tortured himself. Adolf Hitler had the Mohammedan characteristic developed in him: he tortured others, he didn't torture himself. But both tortured. Whom they tortured is not of that much significance. They both were enjoying torture.

Adolf Hitler would have been a great blessing to the world if he had smoked. He would have been less tense if he had been an alcoholic. I don't think there would have been the Second World War.

If he had been a playboy things would have been far better in the world. But he was very puritanical, moralistic.

So I don't see that there is much harm in smoking or drinking a little bit of alcohol. Alcohol is vegetarian. Smoking is also vegetarian! Tobacco is not anything non-vegetarian, it is vegetarian.

And just taking the smoke in and out is only a way of doing pranayama, doing a little bit of exercise, breathing exercise - harmful to you, but not much to make a fuss about.

But people try to control it. If they succeed they become egoistic, which is far more dangerous. If they fail they feel guilty, they feel depressed, which is far more dangerous. If they fail they become condemnatory towards themselves, they lose respect for themselves. And the moment you lose respect for yourSelf, remember, you are losing your trust in life. You will be living now just at the minimum, your life will not have the dance, it will not have the quality of celebration; it will be only a dragging But this sado-masochistic idea exists in everybody. Jainism has only reformed it, developed it, idealized it, philosophized about it, argued about it. It is only one of the aspects of the mind.

The Buddhist has developed another aspect of the mind, the escapist. Avoid, escape, go to the mountains, go to the forests. Renounce life. That too is in everybody more or less. It depends what kind of conditioning has been imposed upon you.

These are all aspects of the mind. You can develop any aspect but it remains of the mind. It is not spiritual at all.

Zen is a transcendence of the mind. It does not develop any aspect of the mind, it takes you beyond the mind. And the only way to go beyond the mind is to enter into life hero and now. You are not to be a sado-masochist, you are not to be an escapist, you are not to be a fanatic, you are not to be a phony, a "holier than thou", an egoist, you just have to be ordinary, utterly ordinary, in tune with life, harmonious with life.

Yes, I agree with James Broughton: "Zen is another word for Zest, living life passionately, making life a joy, a festival, a feasting, a love, a laughter - yes, he is right - "for zip and zap and zing. If you have no appetite for life as it is, and are not excited by the koan of what this here life is about, then Zen is not for you."

Then I am also not for you.

If you are trying to attain something in the other world then Zen is not for you and I am not for you.

If you are trying to reach heaven, sacrificing this life, renouncing this life, condemning this life, then Zen is not for you and I am not for you.

This is the reason why almost all the religions will be opposed to me, will be against me, because I will be destroying the mind, and they have all developed one aspect of the mind. They will all agree at least on one point: in opposing me. And they are all agreed. They never agree on anything else, but they always agree whenever there is a person who loves life totally, intensely, without holding anything back. All these priests are suddenly joined together, because they can see the point that their whole business is in danger, their whole trade secret is being made open. Their whole trade secret is to develop one part of your mind and to create an imbalance in you.

It is like somebody's head becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and the whole body starts shrinking. Now, that man will be a monster. Life needs to be balanced, it needs a rhythm. And all these religions have created monsters not human beings. But they have created beautiful facades, masks for the monsters to hide behind. And they have been in existence for thousands of years, hence their conditioning has gone very deep in you, so deep that it has become part of your bloodstream, your bones, your very marrow.

It is a difficult task for a person like me even to make you understand what I want to do, because all your conditioning will stand between me and you. Unless you are really intelligent and courageous, it is impossible to have a communion with me. You need courage, courage to go into the unknown, into the unfamiliar, into the uncharted. And you need intelligence, tremendous intelligence to see the point.

The whole society tries to make you mediocre because the society is always afraid of intelligent people. Intelligent people like Socrates are dangerous to the society, dangerous because intelligence is always rebellious. It will rebel against any kind of slavery. It will rebel against anything that is wrong. Intelligence is always for freedom, individuality, authenticity. It will fight all that is phony and pseudo.

Socrates was given the alternative by the court that if he left Athens and promised never to come back to Athens then they could allow him to go and he would not be sentenced to death. He refused.

The judge asked, "Why? Don't you want to save your life?"

He said, "The same thing will happen wherever I go, I will have to go through the same process, because I will be doing the same thing there. And sooner or later they will sentence me to death. So what is the point? And in this old age going to another place and starting from scratch... it is better to die here and die a noble death. I will not compromise. Life and death are not as important as my respect for truth."

The magistrate felt sorry - he must have been a compassionate man - but because all the respectable citizens of Athens were against Socrates, the majority were against this man, he had to punish him. He gave him another alternative. He said, "Then you can live in Athens. I can see you are old and to go and live in some other place now will be difficult for you. You can live in Athens, but promise me that you will stop talking about truth."

He said, "That is impossible. Then what is the point of living at all if I cannot even talk about truth?

Not only will I talk about truth I will live truth. I cannot do anything else. Once you know the truth you have to say it, you have to live it because you are it. Knowing it one becomes it."

That's what the Upanishads say: Knowing it one becomes it.

Socrates said, "Don't be worried about me. You just do your duty and let me do my work. If I live then I have to sing my song. And I cannot dance to anybody else's tune, I will create my own music and I will live my own life. And whatsoever the price I have to pay for it I am ready to pay. Even if life has to be taken away, it's perfectly okay, I am happy about it, in fact, tremendously joyous because I can feel great respect for myself. I am dying a noble death for truth. Truth is a higher value than life itself. A life without truth is not life, it is vegetating."

Socrates was given poison. And that has been happening to all the intelligent people around the world. The society wants mediocre people, stupid people, unintelligent people. It starts crippling every child.

Every child is born to be a Socrates. Every child brings the capacity of tremendous intelligence. But the society does not wait even a single moment: it starts destroying the potential of the child.

In Japan they have a certain art form. I cannot call it art because it is pure murder, but they call it an art form. It is called bonzai. In Japan there are four-hundred, five-hundred-year-old trees, and their height is only six inches. They call it a great art. They put the trees into pots without bottoms and they go on cutting their roots. So the tree goes on becoming old but it does not grow. It becomes very old but remains a pygmy. A tree that would have whispered with the clouds, communicated with the stars, danced in the sun, in the wind, in the rain, remains just six inches high. You can see its oldness; it is written all over it. You can see its branches are very old, you can see old age all over it. But it has been crippled by having its roots cut. It has not been allowed to achieve its potential.

Bonzai is being practised on every child around the world. So no child reaches to the ultimate peak of awakening, to pure intelligence, to pure consciousness, because we go on cutting the roots. There are subtle ways: before the child starts asking questions we start giving him answers. Even before he has asked the question we go on stuffing him with answers - an borrowed, all ugly. Borrowed means ugly; howsoever beautiful the words may be, if they are borrowed they are ugly, if they are borrowed they are not true. Truth has to be discovered by oneself, it cannot be given by anybody else: it is not transferable. But parents, priests go on forcing beliefs on the child. He becomes a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian, a Jew, but he misses becoming a human being.

And he becomes unintelligent because he is told to imitate: "Become like a Buddha." That's what Buddhism is: "Become like a Buddha." Why? Why should anybody become like a Buddha? One Buddha is enough, one Buddha is beautiful, but filling the whole world with Buddhas will make it monotonous, boring. Just think of a world where everybody is a Buddha sitting under a tree meditating. Even the trees will become bored! And life will disappear from this planet, immediately life will disappear.

Or just think: all the people become Jesus Christs - everybody carrying their crosses on their shoulders... Then the problem will arise: who will make the crosses? And why go on carrying them?

Who is going to crucify you? They are carrying their crosses. That's what Christianity is: carrying your cross. It is "crossianity", it is not Christianity.

Each child is told to imitate. No child is told to be himself, he is told to be somebody else. Just think:

if you start teaching the roses to be marigolds and the marigolds to be lotuses and the lotuses to be roses... Fortunately, they don't understand your language. Fortunately, they won't bother about you.

You can go on lecturing and they will go on swaying in the wind. They won't listen at all.

But just think: if some way could be found... And now scientists are trying to find ways, and they say, "Yes, there is a possibility that some communication can happen between the trees and man, because trees have their own intelligence. We just have to learn their language and we have to translate our language."

Sooner or later devices will be available which can translate. You will feed the device, you will tell the rose, "Become a marigold," and the device will transmit your language into sensations, vibes. And immediately you will destroy the intelligence of the rose, because once the idea gets into the rose that he has to become a marigold, the rose will be finished - because he cannot become a marigold; that is not inbuilt into his programme. And his effort will be to be a marigold; he will look with greedy eyes at all the marigolds flowering all around and he will become disrespectful about himself, condemnatory: "I am not a marigold. Why am I not a marigold?" And he will start trying in every possible way to become a marigold. Only one thing will happen: he will not be able to grow roses in all this worry, in all this frustration, depression. He will lose juice, he will lose the zest, the zap, the zing - he will lose everything. He will never become a marigold. Only one thing is possible: he will not become a rose either. He will be without flowers.

That's why millions of people in the world are without flowers, without intelligence, without freedom, without individuality. They have all been told to become like Rama, like Krishna, like Buddha, like Mahavira, like Christ, like Mohammed. That's what all these religions are.

It is perfectly beautiful that somebody was a Buddha and somebody was a Confucius and somebody was a Zarathustra, but there is no need to imitate them. Imitation is a way of crippling people, paralysing people, cutting their roots. And each child is told to repeat the beliefs of his parents. And of course, if his mind is programmed to repeat the beliefs he will repeat them.

From the kindergarten to the university that's what we are doing. We call it education. It is not education at all, it is just the opposite of education. The very word "education" means drawing something out that is inside the person, bringing his centre to the surface, to the circumference, bringing his being into a form of manifestation - it is latent, unmanifest, it is dormant - making it active, dynamic. That's what education is.

But this is not happening in the name of education. In the name of education just the opposite is happening: they are stuffing everybody with ideas. Nothing is being drawn out of the well; the waters of the well are not being drawn, instead rocks are being thrown into the well. Soon the waters will disappear; the well will be full of rocks. And that's who you call a scholar, a pundit, a professor. They are nothing but stuffed tomatoes, stuffed potatoes - nothing else, just stuffed people, stuffed with all kinds of bullshit.

As three Ph.D.s were sitting restlessly in the hospital waiting room, a nurse rushed in and said to one of them, "Good news! Your wife just had twins"!

"What a coincidence!" the Ph.D. shouted. "I'm a ball player, I am with the Minnesota Twins!"

A few minutes later she returned and said to the other Ph.D., "My, what good news we are having today! Your wife just gave birth to triplets!"

"Now there is a coincidence," the Ph.D. said, "I work for the Three-M Company!"

Just then the third Ph.D. fainted. The nurse called an intern and together they worked to revive the Ph.D. As a matter of routine they checked his wallet for identification. It was then that they discovered that he was a salesman for Seven-Up!

All these Ph.D.s and D.Litt.s are just stuffed tomatoes. But the whole education is doing that: making people parrots, giving them stupid ideas.

The son of an intellectual comes to his father and asks, "Daddy, what is dialectics?"

The father, not wanting to leave his son without an answer, says, "Listen to the following, son. Let us suppose that two men come into a restaurant, one with dirty hands and the other with clean hands.

Which one is going to go and clean his hands?"

"The one with dirty hands, of course, Daddy!"

"Very good," says the father. "Now let's suppose that the two men walk into a restaurant, one with dirty hands and the other with clean hands. Which one is going to go and wash his hands?"

"The one with dirty hands, Dad. I just told you!"

"No, not this time, son. The one who will go and wash his hands is the one who already has clean hands, because he is in the habit of cleaning them. The one with dirty hands is in the habit of keeping his hands dirty."

"What a mess, Daddy!"

"That's it, Son! Now you are beginning to understand dialectics."

A young professor had been invited to address a poultry convention. "The first thing you must do, to properly raise a flock," he said, "is to separate the male chicks from the female chicks."

After he finished, a lady enquired, "How can you tell male chicks from female chicks?"

"Well," he said, "you go out into your yard and dig a pailful of worms. Then you set them before the chicks, and the male chicks will eat the male worms, and the female chicks will eat the female worms. "

"Yes, but, Professor, how do you tell a male worm from a female worm?"

"Madam," came the answer, "I'm a poultry expert, not a worm expert!"

This stuffed knowledge does not make people wise, it simply hides their ignorance. This is not education, it simply represses their ignorance. Real education will help the child to be more intelligent.

But even the teachers and the professors don't like the intelligent children because they create trouble. They ask questions Which are embarrassing, they ask questions for Which the professors don't have answers. And they are not courageous enough to say, "I don't know the answer." And that is a sure sign of an ignorant man: one who has not the courage to say, "I don't know the answer."

Everybody tries to pretend that he is omniscient, that he knows all that is worth knowing. So it is also in their favour to keep people unintelligent.

Sean Maire came into the garage, walked up to the parking place and, squatting down, went through the motions of driving a car.

"Horan," said a shocked customer, "why don't you tell the man he hasn't a car?"

"Is it mad you take me for? Sure, he pays me a pound to wash it every time he comes in!"

When there is a vested interest, when the person is getting one pound to wash a car Which is not there at all, why should he say it? It will be against his own interest.

The professors, the teachers, the priests are all joined together in a conspiracy against the poor child. And of course, these people are powerful, they can destroy the child: they can programme the child in such a way that he will remain unintelligent his whole life.

Zen is not for unintelligent people. You have to put aside all the programming that has been done on you. And you are capable of doing it, you just need guts. You have to rebel - if you really want to live, you have to rebel. You have to rebel against all kinds of superstitions, against all kinds of stupidities.

You have to rebel against your parents, against your society, against your church. Unless you do that you will not know anything of the ecstasy that this life contains.

This life is tremendously beautiful, Samadhi. But only those who live it can know it; there is no other way.

You ask me: OSHO, DO YOU REALLY THINK ZEN IS FULL OF ZEST, ZIP, ZAP AND ZING?

It is only that, nothing else.

Zen is not a religion - drop that idea. Zen is not a church - drop that idea. Zen is a totally different approach. It is life; it is synonymous with life. It is living life with such intensity that your ego disappears in it, is burnt out, that you dissolve into life, that you are consumed by the fire of life. And only then can you know what a beautiful existence has been given to you as a gift. It is a sheer joy then, each moment... Each moment then is paradise. Paradise is now or never.

The second question

Question 2:

Ajai Krishna Idkanpal,

I know an about those EST-holes! Werner Erhard has been here; I have seen his phoniness. He is a businessman. He is really a Jew - and I don't mean it metaphorically, he is a born Jew. But it was against his business so he changed his name. He changed his name so it would look German:

Werner Erhard. A Jew is hiding behind a German name! He is not interested in you - EST is just a game - so of course EST trainers and their staff in Bombay don't do this in public.

They have completely changed their programme: they have made a special programme for India according to Indian tradition, culture, civilization. They do something totally different in California.

This is a special dish made for Indian fools. If an Indian goes and participates in a Californian EST training programme then he will know it is a totally different thing. What is being given to you in Bombay and Delhi has been especially made for you, because he has to do business.

He is not concerned about your enlightenment. And who has ever heard of any EST-hole becoming enlightened? The day EST-holes start becoming enlightened, enlightenment will not be worth having.

Of course he has an agreement with the society. If you want to do business with the society you have to make agreements, contracts. I have no agreement with any society, Indian or non-Indian. I am in disagreement with all the societies. So let it be absolutely clear to you once and for alt that I am not worried about any disagreeable consequences.

And don't advise me that if disagreeable consequences happen then my sannyasins have no business to crib and complain about public reaction.

They have every reason to crib and complain about public reaction. We are going to fight it! I am not an escapist. Even if we die in the fight that's perfectly okay, but we will live in our own way with no compromise at all. To compromise with the foolish, to compromise with the repressed, is to lose self-respect.

And why should you be worried? You are not a sannyasin. And even if you want to become a sannyasin I am not going to give you sannyas! This is an agreement and I will not break it. I don't want cowards. You are cowardly and Werner Erhard is cowardly. Agreeing with the society is cowardliness.

And he is an escapist. He escaped from his wife and children, from his parents, and remained for many years hidden behind a false name. He was selling encyclopedias, and that's where he learnt his whole business: selling encyclopedias. By and by, reading the encyclopedias, he must have become very wise. And then he started selling wisdom himself. But he remains a salesman, nothing more than that. He is still setting encyclopedias for children. And of course, he knows...

So first he came to India to study - he went around and met many people - to see what would be appropriate for the Indian fools. And then he made a programme for them. They are very happy.

And then there is no commitment. You just participate in the weekend, and finished... you have become an EST graduate! You have simply become an EST-hole.

To be with me is a commitment - it is dangerous. And I am not going to tell my sannyasins what they should do and what they should not do; it is up to them. My sannyasins have absolute freedom.

I am not going to programme them for any act. If they feel it right, then it is only for them to decide where to kiss and not to kiss, where to hug and not to hug - it is absolutely their individual freedom.

And the people who react are wrong! Because what is...? They are not hugging them, they are not kissing them. Who are they? Why does it hurt them? Some repressed sexuality, some ugly monsters inside them start raising their heads. A great desire to curtail other people's freedom, a great desire to dominate other people's character. India has always been a non-democratic country; it has never tasted democracy.

The political democracy that we have imported from the West for these thirty, thirty-three years is not working at all. It cannot work for the simple reason that Indians don't have the democratic mind.

Their basic attitude is undemocratic. So democracy is an imported idea. It does not fit them. They are always looking at each other - what you are doing, what you are not doing.

Now, if my sannyasins interfere in their lives, then certainly that is wrong. But they are not interfering at all; they are living their lives. If two persons are kissing, they are not interfering in your life at all, unless you have some repressed desire to kiss and you have not allowed yourself to kiss your beloved. And then jealousy arises, and your sexuality starts arising in you, and you have to repress it. Rather than repressing it you become angry at the person who made you aware of your repressed sexuality.

No, my sannyasins are not going to accept it with a smile and without complaint. We are going to fight it out. Whatsoever is ugly has to be destroyed, and whatsoever is repressive is ugly.

The last question

Question 3:

Anand Toshen,

As far as screwing this lamp into the French mind is concerned, there will be no difficulty at all.

French minds are just like sockets: you can screw in any kind of bulb. There will be no problem at all. It is difficult to screw a bulb into an Indian mind, but into a French mind any way you do it, it will turn out right.

And take this joke with you:

A French father caught his ten-year-old son smoking. Trying to be an open-minded parent, he said carefully, "Mon fils, I am educating you with great liberte. I let you have whatever you want so that it does not create any complexes in you. Alors, s"il te plait, take heed of my advice. I think you are too young to start smoking."

"Je ne...! Mon oeil!" replied the son indignantly, "why just the other day I fucked three girls! Oh, la la!

And you think I am not big enough to smoke?"

"Oh, Mon Dieu! Tu as fait ca?" And with what type of girls?"

"Je ne sais pas," replied the boy. "I was too drunk to take notice."