Breakthrough... to buddhahood

The sutras this morning belong to a special sermon by Bodhidharma called the "Breakthrough Sermon." I would like you to understand the word "breakthrough."

You know another word which is close to "breakthrough," and that is "breakdown." Mind has both the possibilities. Under tension, anxiety, anguish it can break down, but breakdown is not a breakthrough. Breakdown brings you below the mind; it is insanity. Breakthrough comes out of watching the mind in deep silence, in great awareness. Then you go beyond the mind and to go beyond the mind is to attain authentic sanity.

Mind is just in the middle. You are nothing but a mess. If you can go beyond it, intelligence grows in you; if you go below it, any intelligence that you had disappears.

But in either case, either in breakthrough or in breakdown, you are out of the mind. That's why there is a certain similarity between the enlightened person and the madman. The madman has gone through a breakdown but he is out of the mind. The enlightened person has gone beyond the mind; it is a breakthrough. He is also out of the mind but because he has gone beyond mind, he attains to ultimate sanity, to great intelligence, to a clarity, mind cannot even conceive of.

But the similarity is that both are out of the mind and the mind can interpret both either as enlightened or as insane. Hence a strange thing has been happening in the East and in the West. There are many enlightened people in the West inside insane asylums because Western psychology does not believe in any breakthrough. For anyone who goes out of the mind, only one interpretation is available: that he has gone mad.

In the East there are many madmen who are worshiped as enlightened because the East interprets going out of the mind always as a breakthrough. I have come across a few madmen who were not enlightened but they were worshiped like God. In a place near Jabalpur there was one man who was half paralyzed and utterly mad, but thousands of people used to gather around him. He had nothing to say and there was no light in his eyes and there was no joy in his being.

I used to go and simply sit there and watch the man and what people were doing. He was living almost by drinking only tea. It was difficult for him to drink tea because half his body was paralyzed, so only half of his mouth was able to move; the other half was not able to move. So even while drinking tea, his saliva was dripping into the tea. It was an ugly scene. And the followers would take away the cup of the tea when he had just taken a few sips out of it and they would distribute it to people as PRASAD, as a gift from God.

I watched this whole nonsense ...and the man was not able to even utter a single word. Anywhere else in the world he would have been in a mad asylum, but in India even the breakdown is misunderstood as a breakthrough. And in the West even the breakthrough is understood as a breakdown.

A tremendous synthesis is needed between Western psychology and Eastern understanding of the mind. These are totally and diametrically opposite dimensions. Breakdown brings you back to the stage of the animals, and breakthrough brings you to your ultimate flowering, your buddhahood. And their happening is so different, so qualitatively different, that they can be easily distinguished. Breakthrough happens only to a meditator. Breakdown happens to anybody whose mind becomes too tense, unbearably tense, so that he loses all control of the mind mechanism, and falls down.

The name of the sermon is immensely significant. The East has been aware for centuries that the madman and the enlightened man have a certain similarity.

They both are out of the mind, but at that point the similarity ends. One has gone beyond, towards the stars; the other has gone down towards darker spaces.

Breakthrough is the very science of meditation.

The sutra:

IF SOMEONE IS DETERMINED TO REACH ENLIGHTENMENT, WHAT IS THE MOST ESSENTIAL METHOD HE CAN PRACTICE?

THE MOST ESSENTIAL METHOD, WHICH INCLUDES ALL OTHER METHODS, IS BEHOLDING THE MIND.

To be aware of the mind is being a witness of the mind. As the witnessing grows stronger, you already start feeling yourself beyond the mind. Slowly, slowly the distance grows. Your witness reaches to a sunlit peak and the mind is left in the dark valleys, far away. You can still hear the echoes, but they don't affect you at all. You are beyond their reach.

The disciple asked: BUT HOW CAN ONE METHOD INCLUDE ALL OTHERS?

And Bodhidharma says: THE MIND IS THE ROOT FROM WHICH ALL THINGS GROW, from madness to enlightenment. IF YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THE MIND, EVERYTHING ELSE IS INCLUDED. IT'S LIKE WITH A TREE. ALL OF ITS FRUIT AND FLOWERS, ITS BRANCHES AND LEAVES DEPEND ON ITS ROOT. IF YOU NOURISH ITS ROOT, A TREE MULTIPLIES. IF YOU CUT ITS ROOT, IT DIES. THOSE WHO UNDERSTAND THE MIND REACH ENLIGHTENMENT WITH MINIMAL EFFORT. THOSE WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND THE MIND PRACTICE IN VAIN. EVERYTHING GOOD AND BAD COMES FROM YOUR OWN MIND. TO FIND SOMETHING BEYOND THE MIND IS IMPOSSIBLE ...except yourself, the enlightenment -- that is my addition to the sutra.

Now there are a few important things that Bodhidharma is saying. The first is: IF YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THE MIND, EVERYTHING ELSE IS INCLUDED.

But the word "understanding" can be misunderstood, because the Western psychology is now the predominant psychology all over the world. West or East, the only psychology prevalent today is Western psychology. And the Western psychology tries to understand the mind by analysis. That is a futile effort.

It is like peeling an onion. One layer is taken off and you find another layer, more fresh, waiting for you. You take that layer off and another layer is there. People have been under psychoanalysis for fifteen years continuously; still their psychoanalysis is not complete. The psychoanalysts themselves recognize that they have not yet been able to psychoanalyze a single man perfectly, totally -- until nothing is left to be psychoanalyzed. But still, even the psychoanalysts do not have the insight to understand that perhaps they are doing something absurd.

Mind can never be totally analyzed because while you are analyzing it, it goes on creating new things. It does not remain static. You go on analyzing every week twice or thrice, but the remaining time the mind is creating more ideas, more imaginations, more dreams. You can never come to an end -- it is simply impossible. And if you cannot come to an end, the rock bottom, your understanding of the mind is very superficial.

The East does not believe in analysis. It believes in awareness. In two ways the difference is of tremendous importance. First, for analysis you have to depend on somebody else; it creates a dependence, almost a kind of addiction. Once people have been in psychoanalysis, it is very difficult to get them out of it, because at least twice a week while in psychoanalysis they feel a little light, unburdened, a little relaxed. The mind will gather the tensions again because the roots have not been cut; you have been only pruning the leaves.

And just when you prune a leaf watch what happens: three leaves will come in place of the one you have cut. The tree takes the challenge. You cannot destroy the tree; it is also a living being. It shows its effort to survive. You cannot destroy it by cutting its leaves; hence if you want a tree to have a thick foliage, you have to prune it. By pruning it, the foliage becomes thicker, not thinner.

So first, in psychoanalysis you have to depend on somebody else. And you become addicted, just like with any drug. Yes, let me call the psychoanalysis prevalent in the West and borrowed by the East a very subtle drug. And to come out of it is almost impossible. You get tired with one psychoanalyst, then you move to another psychoanalyst. It is just like getting immune to one drug, then you move to another drug which is stronger and more dangerous. Soon you will become immune to that drug too. It won't affect you. Then you will have to move ahead again.

I have been in monasteries in Ladakh where they had been taming cobras, because there is a certain school in India which tries awareness through drugs. It is perfectly scientific. Its approach is scientific, but very dangerous. One can go wrong any moment, on any step. It has to be done under a master. One starts by taking small doses of a certain drug and getting immune to it; then a stronger drug, then an even stronger drug; and finally a moment comes when no drug affects the man.

At that point only the poison of a cobra can affect him a little bit. He is not being killed by the cobra. You will be surprised to know -- a man who is bitten by a cobra does not survive, but these ascetics I have seen in Ladakh ...and they are in many places, in Assam, in Nagaland. The cobra has to bite them on their tongue so the poison immediately reaches to their bloodstream, and you will be immensely amazed that the cobra dies from biting them! Those people have become so full of poison that the poor cobra ....

This is the fire test. When a man can kill the cobra and not be killed by the cobra, he has become immune to all kinds of poisons in the world.

But the basic method in that school is also awareness. You have to keep alert and aware; that's why no drug affects you. That's the whole process of a strange school -- but the man attains to great awareness.

Psychoanalysis is a very mild drug. You become accustomed, immune to one psychoanalyst. You go to somebody who is stronger, who goes deeper into your mind and finds stuff that the first one has not been able to find. This goes on and on. Psychoanalysts have been around for almost a century, but in one hundred years, they have not been able to bring a man to the understanding of his mind.

Psychoanalysis has failed utterly.

Awareness has a beauty: it does not depend on anybody else; it is just the arising of a new force that has been dormant in you. And you don't analyze the mind.

That is an absolutely futile exercise. You simply watch the mind without any analysis, any judgment, any appreciation, any condemnation, any evaluation -- you simply watch, as if you have nothing to do with it. You are separate and you are watching the mind.

But this separation creates the miracle, because the mind is a parasite; it lives on your blood, it lives on your energy. Because you are identified with the mind, it lives. You are nourishing its roots. So the whole process of psychoanalysis is simply stupid. You are not cutting the roots; you are nourishing the roots and you are simply cutting the leaves. The foliage will become thicker and thicker.

It is no wonder that psychoanalysts go mad four times more than any other profession, and four times more psychoanalysts commit suicide than any other professions in the world. If this is the situation with psychoanalysts, what to think about their patients? The patients have fallen into wrong hands. But psychoanalysis is in fashion and it is one of the most highly paid professions in the West.

It has been joked about around the world that the Jews missed Jesus; it was their own boy who created the greatest profession in the world -- of the priests and the monks, Catholics and Protestants. They have never been able to forgive themselves. Now Catholics are the richest religious organization. The Jews cannot forgive themselves that they unnecessarily crucified their own boy who was creating a great profession.

But they have taken revenge through Karl Marx, by creating another religion, communism. Karl Marx was a Jew. If half the world is Christian, then the other half of the world is communist. They are even. And they are even better off, because through Sigmund Freud, another Jew, they have created a highly paid profession in the world. But neither Christianity nor communism has been of any help; nor has psychoanalysis been of any help. They all have exploited men in different ways.

Communism has taken away the whole dignity of man, his pride, his individuality, his freedom .... Christianity has destroyed the very possibility that you have a reality of your own. You are just a puppet in the hands of God. The strings are in his hand. If he wants you to dance, you dance; if he wants you to cry, you cry. You are not a master of your own destiny.

And then finally psychoanalysis comes, and this also has not been able to give man back his dignity. Now patients in millions, around the world are in the hands of the psychoanalysts. And they depend on them as their father-figure and those father-figures themselves suffer from the same sickness, from the same schizophrenia, from the same split personality.

The Eastern method given by the mystics in the first place gives dignity to man, gives him pride and makes him aware: you have a hidden source of awareness -- just wake it up and become aware of the mind. You don't have to do anything:

just becoming aware of the mind, you are separate. And the moment you are separate, you are no longer nourishing the roots of the mind. The mind will soon wither away, without any analysis; what is the need of analyzing it?

That's why Bodhidharma is saying: Awareness, beholding the mind, is the most essential method to have a breakthrough. And once you have gone just a step beyond the mind, you have entered the world of nirvana, you have entered the world of light and eternal life. You have attained to spiritual integrity, freedom, and tremendous ecstasy which the mind cannot even dream about.

THOSE WHO UNDERSTAND THE MIND REACH ENLIGHTENMENT WITH MINIMAL EFFORT. THOSE WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND THE MIND PRACTICE IN VAIN.

And psychoanalysts should be included with those who don't understand the mind, and are practicing on themselves and on others something absolutely in vain. It is sheer wastage of time and life and energy. Psychoanalysis has to understand the mystical ways of the East, and then it will go through a transformation and it will be of tremendous help to people.

But the trouble is the profession will be gone, and thousands of psychoanalysts who are earning so much money will not be ready for the whole profession to finish. This is a problem. It is such a deep problem that some way has to be found. Otherwise, even if somebody understands the fact intellectually, he will not be ready to do anything, because that will destroy his own vested interest.

It is like the doctors: they help the patient to be cured, but deep down they want the patient to take as long a time to be cured as possible. They don't want to kill him because that would not help their profession, but they would like him to hang between life and death as long as possible, because the longer he is hanging between life and death, the longer they are earning money. If he is cured, their earning is finished. If he dies, their earning is finished. So they neither want him to live nor do they want him to die. They want ...and this is very unconscious, maybe no doctor is clearly aware of it.

I have heard .... A young man came home from the medical college after attaining all his degrees. His father was a doctor and he had sent his son also to become a doctor. On his first day in the practice he saw an old woman whom he used to see coming to his father when he was a child. He could not believe that she was not yet cured.

He said to the father, "Now I am here, and you are old and must be tired. You rest. I will take care of the patients."

And after three days he told his old father, "You will be surprised: the woman that you could not cure in thirty years, I have cured in three days!"

The father hit his head with his hand. He said, "You idiot! That woman has been providing money for your education! And you have cured her. She is so rich that she could have been able to provide for your other two brothers who are in college. And she is strong enough; she will not die, but we have to keep her just in the middle."

The boy could not understand. The old man said, "First learn the basic rule: if a poor man comes to you, cure him quickly. And if a rich man comes to you, then take your time; go slowly."

To avoid this situation in China, they have practiced for thousands of years a very different system. And I think that system should be the system for the future man too. In China the doctor is not paid for curing the patient, he is paid if his patient remains healthy. Every doctor has his patients and the patients pay him if they remain healthy. If they fall sick, then the payment to the doctor stops.

Then he has to cure them at his own expense.

This looks strange, but in the Soviet Union also they have started the same process -- they are experimenting on a small scale. But the process is tremendously significant. Everybody should be given to a certain doctor; a certain area should be given to him. If the people are healthy in that area, they have to pay the doctor; they pay for their health. But if they fall sick, then the doctor has to cure them from his own pocket. Naturally he will cure them quickly and he will not want anybody to be sick. Obviously China has been a healthier country than any other country in the world. They have changed the whole pattern.

The psychoanalyst should be paid only if the person who is his patient is becoming independent, alert, getting beyond the mind. But if he falls into the mind or below the mind, then the psychologist has to cure him from his own pocket. That will change the whole situation.

Awareness is your own power.

And to depend on your own power brings a great freedom and a great authority and a great integrity. The mind is cut from the roots; soon it withers away. And the space that mind was occupying is no longer occupied by anything; it is now pure space. That is your real, authentic being.

Just in the last line I cannot agree with Bodhidharma. I don't know -- and there is no way to know -- whether it is his own line or added by his disciples when they were writing the notes. But it does not matter. What matters is that I should make you aware that the last line is wrong when he says: TO FIND SOMETHING BEYOND THE MIND IS IMPOSSIBLE. No, it is not. That is the only possibility for human growth. That is the only possibility for enlightenment:

going beyond the mind.

So I want to add: TO FIND SOMETHING BEYOND THE MIND IS IMPOSSIBLE ...except yourself, except enlightenment, which are different names of the same thing.

To find yourself is enlightenment.

Except for enlightenment, certainly you will not find anything beyond the mind.

But without this addition the statement remains dangerous and can corrupt people's minds. They can stop with the mind, thinking that there is nothing beyond it. And in fact, everything is beyond it. What is in your mind? Just soap bubbles, signatures on the water, or at the most, sand castles which just a little breeze may be able to demolish.

Your mind is nothing but a fiction. But when you are living in the fiction it looks happier. Watch it from the outside, and the fiction disappears.

But the disciple asks: BUT HOW CAN BEHOLDING THE MIND BE CALLED UNDERSTANDING?

WHEN A GREAT BODHISATTVA DELVES DEEPLY INTO PERFECT WISDOM, HE REALIZES ...THE ACTIVITY OF HIS MIND HAS TWO ASPECTS: PURE AND IMPURE ....

There is no need to be a great bodhisattva to know this simple fact. You can look into your mind and you will find this distinction: that you have activities which are pure, and activities which are not pure. You have love, you have hate; you have peace, you have tensions; you have compassion, you have cruelty; you have creativity and you have destruction. No need to be a great bodhisattva; everybody who has a mind can know without any effort that it has two aspects:

pure and impure. ...THE PURE MIND DELIGHTING IN GOOD DEEDS, THE IMPURE MIND THINKING OF EVIL. THOSE WHO AREN'T AFFECTED BY IMPURITY ARE SAGES.

Again I would like just a little addition, otherwise there is going to be misunderstanding. The sutra says: THOSE WHO AREN'T AFFECTED BY IMPURITY ARE SAGES. Do they get affected by purity? In fact, the definition of a sage is one who is not affected by anything, pure or impure, because one who can be affected by purity cannot avoid being affected by impurity. They are not so different. So I would like to say: Those who are not affected by purity or impurity are sages.

THEY TRANSCEND SUFFERING AND EXPERIENCE THE BLISS OF NIRVANA. ALL OTHERS, TRAPPED BY THE IMPURE MIND AND ENTANGLED BY THEIR OWN KARMA, ARE MORTALS. THEY DRIFT THROUGH THE THREE REALMS AND SUFFER COUNTLESS AFFLICTIONS.

AND ALL BECAUSE THEIR MIND OBSCURES THEIR REAL SELF.

The mind is just like a dark cloud around your self. It does not in fact damage your self, but because of the dark cloud you cannot see the sun. The sun is not affected by dark clouds. It is still shining in its grandeur, but the dark clouds can cover it so much that even the day starts looking like night.

THE SUTRA OF THE TEN STAGES SAYS, "IN THE BODY OF MORTALS IS THE INDESTRUCTIBLE BUDDHA-NATURE. LIKE THE SUN, ITS LIGHT FILLS ENDLESS SPACE. BUT ONCE VEILED BY THE DARK CLOUDS OF THE FIVE SHADES, IT'S LIKE A LIGHT INSIDE A JAR, HIDDEN FROM VIEW."

AND THE NIRVANA SUTRA SAYS, "ALL MORTALS HAVE THE BUDDHA- NATURE. BUT IT'S COVERED BY DARKNESS FROM WHICH THEY CAN'T ESCAPE. OUR BUDDHA-NATURE IS AWARENESS: TO BE AWARE AND TO MAKE OTHERS AWARE. TO REALIZE AWARENESS IS LIBERATION."

...Liberation from the mind, liberation from all afflictions, liberation from purity and impurity, liberation from good and evil, liberation from God and devil, liberation from all dualities and entering into oneness with existence.

EVERYTHING GOOD HAS AWARENESS FOR ITS ROOT. FROM THIS ROOT OF AWARENESS GROW THE TREE OF ALL VIRTUES AND THE FRUIT OF NIRVANA.

This is a significant sutra. The moralists, the puritans of the world have been teaching people, "Do good works, charity, service to the poor, learn to be kind, be virtuous, be celibate, stop being possessive; all good qualities you have to practice."

But Bodhidharma is saying what I have been saying my whole life: that these are not possible to be practiced; they are by-products. You can only create more awareness in yourself, and all these things will come up on their own accord.

And then they have a beauty of their own. If practiced they are only hypocrisies - - they don't go very deep. They are just masks, but they don't change your original face.

This is where morality and authentic religion differ completely. Morality teaches you superficial things: be good to others, be nice to others, be a gentleman, be non-violent, be compassionate and avoid all that is thought to be evil -- cruelty, anger, greed. You can manage, millions are managing. And they are respected deeply, by all kinds of fools that the world is full of. But their morality is not even skin-deep. Just scratch them a little, and suddenly you will see they have forgotten all their practices and their real barbarous nature comes out.

I have heard about a Christian saint who was continuously repeating in his sermons, "When somebody slaps you on one cheek, remember Jesus Christ and what he has said: 'Give him the other cheek also.'" It is a beautiful teaching, but only if it comes from your innermost core. If it comes out of your awareness, it has a different significance. If you practice it, then it is not of much value.

One day it happened: A mischievous fellow, just to see whether the saint himself gives the other cheek or not, stood up and he said, "Now let us see: you have been telling us again and again to give the other cheek." He was a wrestler so the saint got very afraid, and the wrestler came and gave him a good slap on one cheek. But the saint had to keep his word; his congregation was there and everybody was watching what would happen.

He gave him his other cheek thinking, "I have never done any harm to this fellow. He should feel ashamed and guilty." But the wrestler was really a mischievous fellow. He gave an even bigger slap on the other cheek. But then he was suddenly surprised and the whole congregation was surprised: the saint jumped on the wrestler and started beating him this way and that way. He was not expecting it. Although he was a wrestler he forgot; it was so unexpected. He simply could manage to say, "What are you doing?"

The saint said, "What am I doing? Jesus has only said: 'Give the other cheek.' I don't have a third cheek. Now I am free from that discipline and I will show you what it means."

It is very easy to practice, but a practice has a very thin layer which can be scratched.

One sannyasin asked me a few days ago ...she was going after the evening discourse, on her bicycle to the place where she is staying. And a Poona-ite came on his motorbike, stopped the poor girl and squeezed one of her breasts. This they call in Poona, "Hindu culture."

The girl was asking me, "According to Jesus Christ, should I have given him my other breast too?" Even I have not thought about it, that it is not only a question of cheeks. She has asked a really profound question, "What do you say, what should I do in such a situation?"

But basically the teaching of Christ is only a morality. You don't have to give your other cheek, and you don't have to give your other breast. You should have slapped that man as hard as possible, because these so-called Hindu chauvinists ...and this city has a strange ego. They think it is a very cultural city; it is a dead city, it is a cemetery. But certainly in a cemetery nothing happens. How this ghost managed to come on the motorbike I don't know, but ghosts are interested in women's breasts because their whole life, when they were alive, they were interested in women's breasts. So even when they are dead, the old habit continues.

There is no need ...it is not MY teaching to give the other cheek, because what will you do when he hits the other cheek? You don't have a third one!

Her question reminded me about a conference of psychoanalysts. A very old psychoanalyst, who has been a disciple of Sigmund Freud, was reading a paper before the conference. And just in the front row was a beautiful woman who was a psychoanalyst. Another psychoanalyst, who was very famous, was playing with her breasts. And it was such a constant disturbance to the poor fellow who was reading the paper. He was hiding his eyes, but even -- he was also after all a man, the same kind of man .... So once in a while he was looking at what was going on. And he could not believe what kind of woman this was ...that old ugly fellow was playing with her breasts and she was listening to the paper as if nothing was happening. And so much was happening to the man who was reading the paper, who had no breasts and nobody was doing anything to him!

But the question: what kind of woman was this? The man was simply ugly although he was a famous psychoanalyst. But fame does not change people; fame simply makes them more hypocritical, fame simply makes them do things in the dark, from the back door. Their front door is kept very clean and very pure, with pictures of all the great saints.

Somehow he managed to finish. It was very difficult to finish the paper -- because his priority was to ask the woman -- and as he finished the paper he stepped down from the podium and went directly to the woman. As he went there, the old man pulled his hands away. He said to the woman, "The whole time I was reading the paper, I have been seeing this man playing with your breasts, and you did not object."

The woman said, "I am a psychoanalyst. It is his problem. Although he is old, he is not grown up; he is childish, immature. It is his problem; nothing to be worried about."

The reader thought it strange but that gave him an idea that it was his problem too. Why should he be disturbed? Perhaps he wanted to be in that old man's place ....

Your so-called moralists, your so-called preachers, your so-called psychoanalysts, your so-called philosophers are just so superficial. And they are carrying the whole load of problems inside them, because they have not cut the roots and they have taken the whole situation from the wrong end.

Bodhidharma is very clear when he says: EVERYTHING GOOD HAS AWARENESS FOR ITS ROOT. FROM THIS ROOT OF AWARENESS GROW THE TREE OF ALL VIRTUES AND THE FRUIT OF NIRVANA. He far transcends moralists, puritans, so-called good people, do-gooders. He has touched the very rock bottom of the problem.

Unless awareness arises in you, all your morality is bogus, all your culture is simply a thin layer which can be destroyed by anybody. But once your morality has come out of your awareness, not out of a certain discipline, then it is a totally different matter. Then you will respond in every situation out of your awareness.

And whatever you will do will be good.

Awareness cannot do anything that is bad. That is the ultimate beauty of awareness, that anything that comes out of it is simply beautiful, is simply right, and without any effort and without any practice.

So rather than cutting the leaves and the branches, cut the root. And to cut the root there is no other method than a single method: the method of being alert, of being aware, of being conscious. Be more conscious, and everything that will happen through you is going to beautify this existence, make it more divine, make it more mature. Your awareness will not only bring flowers to you; it will bring fragrance to millions of people.

Awareness is the golden key to the gate of God.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.