Chapter 2

1984 in Lao Tzu Grove

Om Mani Padme Hum

The Tibetans have got a mantra... Om Mani Padme Hum. The Lotus and the Jewel both together. It must have originated at a moment like this.

Om Mani Padme Hum Om is simply an exclamation, it simply means "Ahhh!" or "Oohhh!" It is not a word, it is meaningless, but tremendously meaningful too. Meaningful in the sense of its beauty, its joy, its depth... Om....

I am reminded of Basho, old Basho. Whenever I remember the Japanese haiku poet tears start coming. Basho is one of the greatest men, or saints, whichever you prefer. To me they are the same: the ancient-born. And that sound - oohhhh, that sound - is Om. That sound... the frog jumps into the pond:

The ancient pond

The frog jumps in

Plop!

Om Mani Padme Hum... The Jewel in the Lotus.... I am soaking in the pond. It is so beautiful.

Om Mani Padme Hum

Before birth I was okay.

After death too I will be okay.

In life the same okay continues.

And the okay is perfect.

Dogen sings in a haiku - Dogen is a saint....

Coming

Going away

The waterfowl

leaves no trace behind

Nor it needs a guide

Om Mani Padme Hum.

So beautiful... so tremendous... I am in the land of the buddhas. Again I can utter nonsense, because only nonsense can become poetry.

The other day, Devageet, I saw that you were a little hurt again because I called you a fool. Please try to understand the language of a madman. If you want to understand the meaning of the word fool read The Prince by Dostoevsky, or even better, Mikhail Naimy's book, The Book of Mirdad. It is incomparable. Each word is pure understanding, so sweet. Particularly because, as you know, I suffer from diabetes. The Book of Mirdad is good for all sufferers from diabetes because it is so sweet even though there is no sugar in it.

The Book of Mirdad talks about the fool - fool simply means the simple, the childlike, the innocent.

This is why the other day I called you a fool, with great love.

I can call anybody a fool only when I love them; otherwise I am very respectful to the real fools. Then I say "sir".... I called you a fool because I love you. Whenever I call you a fool, rejoice, utterly rejoice, rejoice totally. Only then you will be able to understand.

Om... ahhh! This is the very beginning of the world. Nobody has created it as the Christians think.

They think that God created it. God has done nothing. God is the very existence, not a creator. God is the very creativity that pervades everything.

God is,

even today,

this very moment,

creating.

Wherever there are devils in creation, there is God. I am seeing what must have been the very beginning. Nothing can be more beautiful, more pure, more musical... just pure music, just pure poetry.... Just the pureness of all that is good, all that is beautiful....

Om Mani Padme Hum

This mantra has been chanted for thousands of years in Tibet, but it can only be chanted in Tibet because they alone know the great height, the purity of the Himalayas; the purity which nobody else can know. Tibet is the only country in the world to come closest to religion. It is unfortunate, most unfortunate that Tibet is now in the hands of the communists; they are destroying it.

This is the very essence, the ultimate good. The Book of Mirdad must have been conceived in such moments. There are very few books which have been conceived in such moments: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching....

Don't be worried about time. Can you ever be freed from all worries, just like me... free from all concerns? Yes, I know you can - one day you will be. But for the moment, I am a madman and you are a fool; what a strange combination...!

Om Mani Padme Hum

Om Mani Padme Hum

Om Mani Padme Hum

Om Mani Padme Hum

Now I am only concerned with beauty, that is why I am mad. Just in this beatitude, if you can imagine... it is so beautiful. I know the origin, I recognize it immediately....

The tears in my eyes

are good, so good.

The roses are blooming,

the birds are singing again,

and these fools don't know....

When there are words, nobody expects words and flowers to be together. You must think that I am talking nonsense. It is impossible for me to go out of my mind - I cannot. I go out but I have no mind. I am a madman not a fool. I am such a height that to even say anything is difficult....

Om Mani Padme Hum....

Om Mani Padme Hum

The Jewel in the Lotus

I know you find it difficult to follow the word chawal. It should be properly pronounced, but I'm not a proper man. It should be pronounced jew-el, but I pronounce it cha-wal. I pronounce it phonetically.

English is illogical; it is written in one way and spoken in another. My difficulty is that I have lived and been brought up using languages which are phonetic, which are written and spoken exactly the same. English is a little bit crazy. If Jesus could have read his words in the modern English version he would have beaten his head, he would have wept. He had said on the cross, "Father, forgive these people" - the people who were crucifying him - "because they know not what they are doing."

But I know perfectly well that seeing the English version he would not have said this. Impossible.

Jesus spoke Aramaic, which is still spoken by a few people in the East. Gurdjieff had come in contact with those few people, and whatsoever Gurdjieff had said about Jesus is not from the modern English version of the New Testament, it is from those few people. He had heard the stories from those people. Those stories have been passed by word of mouth.

Aramaic is a primitive language; hence it has the poignancy, the beauty, which only a forest can have and never a Victorian English garden. It is impossible for a Victorian English garden. It is a pity to see trees pruned and cut according to measurement.

Jesus never knew what was going to happen to him, that he would be translated. No master can be translated. From Aramaic he was translated into Hebrew. Much was lost because he was fighting against those Jews, and when they translated him into Hebrew, in that very translation Jesus was lost.

Then he was translated into Greek. Perversion from perversion! Aramaic to Hebrew, Hebrew into Greek. Then he was translated into Roman. The very perversity - because the Jews and the Romans were the people who had killed him. And from Latin, that is Roman, he was translated into English. Still, the old English translation is far more beautiful, far more significant. The more modern it becomes, the less it contains, the more ugly it becomes.

Fortunately I was born to primitive people, in a village, uneducated. For nine years I remained uneducated. What a blessing! No modern child can afford it. It is against the law. You have to go to school. For nine years I was absolutely free from all education. It is because of that I could penetrate the ultimate, that I could come into contact with the unknown. Those nine years were beautiful, immensely beautiful. No education, no discipline, no morality.

From my earliest years I was brought up, again fortunately, by my grandfather, my mother's father, not by my father. A father is bound to be a disciplinarian, because he is bound to be concerned about the future. My grandfather, maternal grandfather remember... because my father's father was a totally different man. My mother's father had no other child. My mother was the only child, and once my mother was married he showered all his love on me. I lived like a king. He used to call me Raja. Nobody has called me that since. Raja means the king.

Although my grandfather was not very rich, he was the richest man in his village. On each of my birthdays he would bring an elephant. I would sit on the elephant and throw coins all around. That was his great joy. In his days there were golden coins, not paper notes. That's what I have been doing my whole life: throwing golden coins all along. I am still throwing, sitting on an elephant....

So when I say something and you do not understand, please forgive me. I come from a totally different context. I am really a foreigner. In my own country I am a foreigner. My whole vision is in a way primitive, and in a way original. Original means primitive, of the origins.

This morning I said, "the chawal in the lotus." I know the right pronunciation, but what to do with a wrong man? - I will still pronounce it in my way. Coming in I asked Vivek, "What is the right pronunciation, 'jewel'?" I can easily understand jewelry, jeweler, jewel, but forgive me... I will say "the chawal and the lotus."

I am a little bit stubborn, my type of people have always been so. If they are not stubborn they cannot work. To work with stupid people you have to be stubborn, really hard, steel hard.

And this beautiful mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum, has been translated by the English fools. It seems unimaginable, but it has been translated. Even you will be shocked... they think it is something sexual! They think the mani represents the male sexual organ - look at the perversity of the so- called great psychologists - - and the lotus represents the female sexual organ! Now, you cannot make the meaning that they make of it.... Om Mani Padme Hum means to them male human organ into female human organ. Great! Great discovery! And these fools are thought to be scientists, biologists, psychologists, and all kinds of things, but they are just imbeciles, idiots.

I should not use the same word, fool, for them. They are not ordinary fools, they are idiots. An idiot is a fool who cannot be cured. A fool is an idiot who is already on the path to recovery. But I cannot call these people fools; they are idiots.

This morning, talking about Dostoevsky's book I called it The Prince. Forgive me, it is not titled The Prince; that is my own title for it, on my own book. I have titled it The Prince but the printed title is The Idiot. I avoided mentioning the word idiot this morning because I wanted to make the distinction.

The idiot is incurable. The fool is available, ready, ready to change. The idiot is hard, very hard. For anything to penetrate into the head of an idiot is impossible. An idiot's head is covered with steel, nothing can penetrate him. That is why I called the book The Prince.

I also remembered Mikhail Naimy's book The Book of Mirdad. That book is just unbelievable. I feel jealous of only one man, Mikhail Naimy. Jealous not in the ordinary sense, because I cannot feel jealous in that sense; jealous in the sense that he has written it already, otherwise I would write it. I would have written it... it is of the same heights I am flying to.

From these heights I can see the whole existence as a play, as celebration, without any reason or rhyme, without any meaning. Yes, that's what I would like you to know too. People celebrate Christmas; they should celebrate all the year round. To celebrate only once in a while simply shows that your life is not a life of celebration, it is not a joy.

Everyone can go mad except me because I am already mad. I have been mad for almost one fourth of a century, and if you all help me I may make the century. I can make it... not on my own; on my

own I am just Humpty Dumpty, but if you all help me I can make the century very easily. My father lived seventy-five years; my father's father, eighty; my father's father's father, ninety. Why can't I beat them in this race? If you all put your energies together you can help a buddha make millions of buddhas in the world. I am mad; otherwise just to think of one buddha is enough, and I always think of millions of buddhas. Less than that is not enough. I always think big. We have to create millions of buddhas, only then a new man can be born. Only then can we make Christians disappear and Christs appear. The beginning of the buddhas will be the death of the Buddhists.

I am a beginning and also an end.

I am an end... end in the sense that after me there can be no Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Mohammedanism. After me there is no possibility of any ideology. With me ends the old and begins the new -the New Man. Man with no ideology, no religion, no philosophy, no concept to live, but only a joy to live, a celebration.

This is the place spoken of in Jonathan Livingston Seagull, spoken of by Khalil Gibran in The Prophet. It is so tremendously beautiful I would like to dance... so beautiful. I would like to be a Baul again. Yes, in one of my lives, not in this life of course, I was a Baul, a mad singer playing an ektara.

You have never been here, but I know you can go a little further. How do I know? I am a con-man.

You cannot con me. I have conned so many con-men.

Even when I can no longer hear a man, I can hear a woman. This is strange but it is so... because as you go higher the male is left behind, but the female is heard; in fact can be heard only then.

Before that who hears a woman? Who hears a wife? That is one of the reasons why I have chosen the women to lead my whole organization, and not the man. I am a man and it would have been logical to choose other men, as it has always been done. Lao Tzu chose Chuang Tzu to be his successor. Chuang Tzu was beautiful, I have nothing against him....

Again, Jesus chose the twelve disciples, and among those twelve there was not a single woman.

And yet on the cross when he was dying only three women were there. There was Magdalena...

yes, I call her Magdalena, not Magdalene, because Magdalene looks less feminine than Magdalena.

I have named some houses in the ashram after Magdalena. Sheela was asking me, "Isn't the real name Magdalene, not Magdalena?" I said, "Don't be worried about the real. What I say, follow it."

Magdalena was there. Mary, Jesus' mother was there, and Magdalena's sister was there. All the so-called apostles were absent. But still Jesus chose Peter to be his successor. Lao Tzu was at least right in choosing Chuang Tzu even though Chuang Tzu was a man. But Jesus was not right in choosing Peter.... As you can see, my eyes, my ears and my hands are all so full of Jesus.

Your laughter is so good, so beautiful.

Flowers are made of it.

Stars are born out of it.

Love is only a fragrance

of this flower.

Can there be

so much

goodness...?

I am such a con-man. Even my ears are trained, they hear only what they want to hear. My eyes are trained, they see only what they want to see - for the simple reason that I want to live the way I want. I have always lived according to my own way, right or wrong, I don't care. If there is a God, and I have to face him, he will have to answer to me, not me answer to him.

I have lived my own way. I am not answerable to anybody. When you live according to somebody else you are always confused, and answerable to them; always trying to fulfill their expectations.

I don't expect anything from anybody, nor do I want anybody to expect from me. Freedom is my slogan. It is freedom that brings truth.

J. Krishnamurti's first book is called The First and Last Freedom. In fact after that he has not said anything new. That book contains his testament; since then he has been dead. It happens to many people. Khalil Gibran died at the age of eighteen when he wrote The Prophet. In fact he lived many, many years afterwards and wrote many books, but The Prophet remains unsurpassed.

Krishnamurti's title is good: The First and Last Freedom. What is the first and last freedom? To be oneself, totally, utterly, without any consideration for any consequences.

Gurdjieff used to say, "Do not consider others...." It is absolutely right. The moment you consider others you are no more yourself. But to live in freedom is difficult too because you have to live with people who are full of expectations, and they are very touchy! If their expectations are not fulfilled they are miserable, and the miserable create misery for you, they cannot do otherwise. You can only give that which you have, and they have only misery.

So I say do not consider, let the world go on its way, you move on your own.

When you are yourself,

there is truth,

there is beauty,

there is grace,

there is ecstasy.

Om Mani Padme Hum

This mantra is tremendously powerful. Thousands of years and millions of people chanting it have made it so sharp, so penetrating, that just to repeat it again and again can create all the chemistry:

Om Mani Padme Hum

Om Mani Padme Hum

IT IS AN AMAZING THING that all religions of the world agree on the sound of the soundless sound, OM. That's the only agreement between all religions, and there are three hundred religions. Why?

Why do they all agree only on this point? They agree because when you come to such a height you hear it... it resounds all over... vibrates... OM....

Om Mani Padme Hum

Om is the most significant sound ever uttered by man.

Om Mani Padme Hum

Om Mani Padme Hum....

I love this mantra. I love no other mantra like it because there is none parallel to it. There cannot be.

No other people have touched these heights continuously for hundreds of years. Don't look at my legs, and my toe....

The foolish toe,

what does it know;

it is not the Tao

it is only a toe.

I know the worry is because of your love for me. But don't take indications from toes. Listen to the whole. I cannot be harmed. I am beyond harm. Nothing can be taken away from me. I cannot lose anything. What a grandeur! To be in a state of not losing anything because you don't have anything.

I live like a king; in fact no king has ever lived like me. I can truly say what I mean and mean what I say. I am beyond the clouds, in open sky,

unlimited,

unbounded.

I am not saying anything of the ego. It is just a joy. I rejoice in my people, that's what I mean when I say I am proud. I am not comparing with anything, because there are not other people on the earth to whom my people can be compared. It is a rare moment in the history of humanity that only my people are the religious people.

The bureaucracy, the government, the politics, the stupidity... they are synonymous in my language.

They may not be synonyms in the dictionary, but I don't have a dictionary any more. For the past

few months now I have not read any book. I have stopped reading for the simple reason that what is beautiful has already been understood. Now it is pointless to read. I don't even read the Vedas, the Bible, the Koran. There is nothing that can be added to my experience, so I have stopped. Why waste your vision, your eyesight? It is not worth it.

When my doctors started saying that if I still wanted to study I would have to use spectacles, I said, "To hell with all books, because I hate spectacles." I hate all kinds of specs because they obstruct, they come in between. I want things face to face, directly, immediate. So I have stopped reading books. And the library is so rich, and so big, containing all that is great. But it no longer matters to me, I have gone beyond the words.

I am not silent because I don't want to say anything to you, but because what I see is really spellbinding. It is really... this is the moment when one says, "Aahhh!" and this is the meaning of Om. But you have to experience it; you have to live it. There is no other way to know it. To be is to know. To be is the only way - Tao, the way. Tao does not mean anything else, it simply means the way to be poetic again, to be a singer again, a Baul, a dancer, a mad dancer - because if when you dance you take care of your steps, then it is not a real dance. When all is forgotten, the steps and all, when only the dance remains, the whirling - the whirling Jalaluddin Rumi knew - just the whirling....

Twelve hundred years ago Rumi created the whirling dervishes, the dancing Sufis. He himself danced for thirty-six hours!

I am a simple man. This is so beautiful.... Basho where are you? Come write again... paint... Basho, again say:

The ancient pond

A frog jumps

and the silence... Om

Om Mani Padme Hum.

This is beauty...

Beauty,

and beauty is God.

I am facing God.

I am touching him.

So immensely vast.

Om Mani Padme Hum

Om Mani Padme Hum

At this moment I can create Tolstoy... Dostoevsky... Leonardo... Turgenev... Lao Tzu... Chuang Tzu... Buddha... Mahakashyap... Bodhidharma... Kabir... Jesus ....

The silence is so beautiful.

There are beauties and beauties

on every plane,

on every level.

Even in the mud a lotus can flower.

Om Mani Padme Hum.

Om Mani Padme Hum

I can repeat this mantra forever. Its beauty is such and you are so deaf that it has to be repeated again and again. Truth by its very necessity has to be repeated, because those who are hearing are not hearing. They have lost that sensitivity, that receptivity. So I will go on repeating this mantra.

The day I see that it has penetrated to your unconscious, beyond you, within you, where right now you cannot reach... but I can.... The moment I see it has reached, the seed has found its soil, I will say it no more. That will be the end of the series.

Om Mani Padme Hum...

Om Mani Padme Hum.

Just the vibe of it is thrilling, tremendously thrilling, just overwhelming; one is drowned in it.

This mantra was not composed by a poet. Poets can say beautiful things but those beautiful things are sweet nothings. This mantra was conceived, not composed, conceived just as a woman conceives a child, conceived by the mystics. The mystic is always feminine, that's why I call the male part of you the fool. But don't be offended; I love your heart, your feminine part. Only the feminine can be loved. The male, the masculine, is unlovable; it can be used, it is a good mechanic, technician, scientist, mathematician, but never a mystic.

The moment you become a mystic, from he you become she. Now, it will look the very climax of absurdity to call Jesus she, Buddha she, Lao Tzu she. Nobody has called them that, but I have.

I am determined to open all doors to all that has remained hidden. I am ready to take every risk.

Jesus is a she, it cannot be otherwise. Only the heart knows. The mind can be knowledgeable but never knows.

This mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum, was conceived like a child, in the hearts of the mystics on the peaks of the Himalayas. The Himalayas are covered with snow from eternity; it has never melted. It has remained the same.

This mantra comes from Tibet, the hiddenmost part of the Himalayas. And on these heights I hear it: it is a sound like the sound of bees buzzing. And the humming is so beautiful. One cannot be grateful enough to the mystics who tried to make this humming sound into a mantra. Om Mani Padme Hum... aahhh, the Jewel in the Lotus.

I can hear the giggle of the fool, because I am still saying chawal. I will always say it. I stick to my ground right or wrong. I care for sincerity, authenticity. I am authentically myself. I feel if it is spelled j-e-w-e-l it should be pronounced chawal not jew- el. That is the wrong pronunciation - according to me of course. Sooner or later you will have to make something like Osho-English. If there can be Indian- English, American-English, then why not Osho-English, with all its absurdities? I am laying the foundations for it.

Om Mani Padme Hum

When one lays foundations one should lay them religiously.

Om Mani Padme Hum To be good with me is difficult. I called you the fool, and still you are nice to me. The fool...

respectfool... and I will go on calling you the fool because I want to kill the fool, to crush the fool completely! I want you to be without it.

I am reminded, by the way, of thousands of Indian people around the world named Fooljan. Fool in the Indian language means flower. Now, when these people learn English and start writing their names they don't spell it as it should be, f-o-o-l; no, they have found a way, they spell their name p-h-o-o-l, Phooljan. But everybody is doing that, somehow hiding one's fool. But the more you hide it, the more you protect it, the more it is there. Leave it open to the winds and to the stars and to the sun and to the moon, and it will disappear. I want to kill it. If I ever wanted to kill anything it is the fool. But to kill a fool, I mean his foolishness.... I was afraid you might think, "A saint, and trying to kill something?"

In India saints don't even kill mosquitoes, they don't kill bedbugs. Bedbugs are okay, mosquitoes are okay, but the fool has to be killed. I am not violent, but with the fool I am. I am utterly violent with the fool. I want to cut off its head! That's why sometimes I am so bitterly and naturally misunderstood by the fools. I don't think any man has been misunderstood so much. I am blessed as far as that is concerned. I am the most misunderstood man. But it is nobody's fault, it is my own device. I am hitting the fools just exactly where it hurts, on their very skulls. And remember, I always carry the joke to its very end, the punch line!

There is an ancient story, the famous Zen story, The Ten Bulls of Zen. It is a pictorial story with ten picture cards, each card containing a phase of man and his evolution. The original pack consisted of only nine cards; the tenth was added by a madman like me. Everybody opposed him, everybody denounced him. He had to leave his country. He added the tenth picture, and the tenth picture is the most beautiful, the very culmination, the culmination of culmination itself.

In the first picture the bull is lost and the owner is searching for it.

In the second, he is looking everywhere and he cannot find it.

In the third, far, far away he can infer: "Perhaps that is my bull."

In the fourth he has actually seen the bull - not the whole bull but just its tail.

In the fifth he has seen the whole bull.

In the sixth he has caught hold of the bull by its tail.

In the seventh the man has learned a lesson; he is holding the bull by the horns.

In the eighth he is riding on the bull.

In the ninth they have arrived home. The ninth has no picture, neither the bull nor its owner. That was the old pack. A madman like me added the tenth to those nine cards.

In the tenth the man is seen in the marketplace -not only seen but with a bottle of wine. Now, no Buddhist can forgive it! Nobody thinking himself religious can forgive it!

That madman was thrown out of his country, but miraculously the tenth card has remained.

Whatsoever is done by men like me... you may throw them out, you may kill them, you may crucify them, but what they do remains. You cannot destroy it. The man - nobody even knows his name, they even erased his name from the books; nobody knows who he was, but he has done a tremendous service to humanity.

I have denied the invitation to visit America for years. My first Western disciples were American.

Mukta has been asking me to go to America, and she could manage it because she belongs to one of the richest families in the Greek world. But I said, "No, Mukta."

One day while sitting in my room, Sheela just laughingly offered me a bottle of champagne, thinking that I would refuse, not knowing me at all. I accepted it with a "thank you." She looked puzzled.

Vivek laughed, everybody laughed when I poured the champagne into my glass and drank it. Vivek took pictures. They have been hiding those pictures, but I will persuade them to give the pictures to you because they are the tenth picture. I want to add the tenth picture to a man himself, not to any story, not to any pack of cards.

In the East only the woman serves the wine. Ashu, don't be afraid. Except fear, nothing has been the enemy of women. They were subjugated because of their fear. They were so ready, so willing to be subjugated, to be slaves, and for centuries. Don't be afraid. At least with me be fearless, because I teach nothing but fearlessness.

I want to bring back the ordinary man, with all his extraordinariness. Naturally, first I have to be that ordinary man myself - and I am an ordinary man, extraordinarily ordinary... with a champagne bottle in the marketplace, rejoicing. That's what champagne represents.

Life is nothing but wine, and at such heights I know that I am a drunkard. I know the ultimate heights of Being and nothing can be higher than that, that much I know.

Om Mani Padme Hum....

Even while I am dying I will say the last word. Nobody else can say it for me, on my behalf; nobody can be a pope. I am... and will not be represented by anyone else.

Om Mani Padme Hum...

The Jewel and the Lotus.

Om Mani Padme Hum

I was thinking to discontinue the mantra, but the beauty is such that it cannot be discontinued so soon. For one reason more, Devageet: it has only scratched your subconscious, not penetrated to the very core, to the very center; hence I have to continue....

Om Mani Padme Hum....

The Himalayan hills

are covered with snow, and

the sun is rising.

The first sunrays

falling on the snow are

creating millions of

diamonds....

That is the meaning of Mani, Diamond. The Diamond symbolically represents the eternal. What a strange phenomenon, the snow, the ephemeral... one moment here, the next moment gone; sometimes represents the eternal....

The snow,

the sunrise,

the diamonds,

the miracle of eternal being

reflected in the ephemeral,

in the very phenomenal....

Just as the moon is reflected in the lake, even ripples can disturb it; just a pebble thrown into the lake is enough. But although it can be disturbed it is capable of reflecting the beyond in its undisturbed moments. That is what I call meditation: an undisturbed moment in mind - which is always disturbed, but is capable of being undisturbed. The very disturbance proves its capacity to remain undisturbed - even if for a single moment it is here and now. In fact we should only say "herenow"; the and should be dropped. It is not needed in reality. In language maybe it is needed, but I am not a linguist, thank God. Although there is no God we can still use the expression thank God - that means thanking no one.

The moment the mind is herenow... get it! Herenow... get it!

Om Mani Padme Hum Then you are surrounded in all directions and dimensions by diamonds, and also by lotuses. That is the meaning of Padme.

Om Mani - aahhh! The Diamond... the Diamond is the indestructible part of our being. Om Mani Padme Hum, and the Padme, the Lotus, is our changing circumference. The Diamond is our center, and the Lotus, the cyclone, and we are the centers of the cyclone.

And what is the Hum? It means nothing but emphasis. It simply means, as when you strike a rock with a hammer you say "Hummmm!" - that is Hum. And the mystics have to strike on the rock of your unconscious... Hummmmm!

Om Mani Padme Hum... what a beautiful expression: the Diamond and the Lotus together. They are not colleagues; the Diamond lives in a totally different world. The Lotus knows nothing of the diamond, but the mystic has brought them together. The mystic is the magician. He brings things together which cannot ordinarily be brought together. Togetherness is his whole work, and this mantra represents the ultimate togetherness of the mortal and the immortal...

of darkness and light, of the changing and the unchanging...

Om Mani Padme Hum....

I love it so much; that's why, although I had decided to discontinue this series, in spite of myself I have to continue it.

A strange thing is happening today. My right eye is becoming blurred with a tear. It is because of Devageet becoming scratched - although only the unconscious, and that too is being scratched only in part, but still that affects my right eye. My left eye, which is always full of tears at such moments, is absolutely clear. This is happening for the first time. Ashu, you should be sad. My right eye is full

with a tear. But I don't really mean that you should be sad... soon my left eye will follow. Just go to the heights so the left eye also is full of tears... and the poor right will never be full of tears, only a small tear, but even that is rare.

Remember again Jonathan the Seagull. Go higher. I will not be able to speak until my left eye becomes full of tears. Yes, the tear is appearing.

Tears are beautiful....

Tears and laughter, life consists of only two things.

The dance is coming... the dance of Jalaluddin... thirty-six hours dancing continuously shouting "Allah! Allah! Allah!" People first gathered around him, then they left. How long could they stay with him? Thirty-six hours! Even the disciples left. That is condemnable. Then he was alone, but he continued his dance.

That is what I am doing in my aloneness - dancing, singing. Nobody else is there... nobody else can be. Everybody is born alone, remains alone, dies alone....

Om Mani Padme Hum.

Ashu, your tear is just appearing in my left eye like a sunrise. But this time it is appearing on both of my sides, left and right; I am amazed because it always used to appear only on the left.

Aahhh... Om Mani Padme Hum...

the flowers are blooming.

Om Mani Padme Hum I cannot wait any longer. I know my bladder is full. I have already waited too long. I am such a rascal that even if something is going against me I will sit up in my grave and say, "Stop! Put it right! Put it exactly as I want it!" With me you cannot have your own way. My way is the only way, as far as being with me is concerned.

Om Mani Padme Hum....

Om Mani Padme Hum

Ordinarily man has understood meditation to mean concentration. It is not, it is relaxation, and both are contrary. This is so beautiful... I can sing my song. Alas I am not a singer, nor a poet, nor a painter, but one need not be a poet, a painter, or singer to sing a song; one can sing it just by being ordinary. It works in ordinariness.

This morning I was talking about The Ten Bulls of Zen. The ninth picture is just an empty garden.

That has been the ultimate of all religions. Even Krishnamurti belongs to the ninth picture. It does not matter whether he thinks it is so or not, but he belongs to it.

I have been in the company of the ninth - Krishna, Ramana, J. Krishnamurti, and there are the ancient ones also: Mahavira, Mohammed, Moses - they all belong to the ninth. Yes, they are very saintly, very extraordinary. The grip of the extraordinary is extraordinary; to get out of it is the last thing in existence, and that is the tenth card. When you come out of nothingness, back into the world of ordinariness, it is so beautiful. The ordinary is no more ordinary. The mundane has become sacred.

Om Mani Padme Hum contains both. Om is beyond it, and Hum is below the expressible. Hum is used by the laborers; Om is used by the saints. Om Mani Padme Hum joins them both; Om becomes Hum, and Hum becomes Om.... What a tremendous synthesis.

The Diamond is the hardest, the most masculine - Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin. Amazingly, Stalin means steel; that's what the Diamond stands for. It is the steelest of all steels. And the Lotus, the softest, the most fragile. You cannot conceive of anything more fragile than a lotus - the hardest and the softest. The Lotus represents the feminine. The feminine is always at the center, the center of everyone. The Diamond is at the circumference. Its hardness is to guard, to protect - a safety device, a security. The feminine however is at the center, at the very core where security is not needed; where one can open up in love; where one can trust; where trust is simple, not arranged, not made. It is simply, effortlessly there.

This mantra joins them both, the highest, Om, with the lowest, Hum. The hardest, the Diamond, with the softest, the Lotus. The total is what is existential, and here and now. It is the present within me herenow. It is present in my silence, and it is also present in the words that bubble out of my silence.

I have come across hundreds of mantras but nothing is comparable to Om Mani Padme Hum.

Just from words, or rather sounds... but what intensity! What fire! What sacred fire!

It is no ordinary fire, but a sacred fire which burns, and burns totally, leaving nothing behind... and yet you are reborn out of it.

It is a mystery just like the mythological story of the phoenix - the story of a bird burning itself to death, and out of that death coming alive again and again, eternally.

It is not just a myth. No myth is just a myth; something of the truth is given through it. Down the generations this mantra has been there, and I have come to it again and again. I see Ashu laughing.

She must be thinking, "This man is really crazy. He must be to come back again and again to his mantra." You cannot drown his mantra; to drown him is impossible, so the mantra goes on and on....

Om Mani Padme Hum....

This is the mantra Tibetans repeat when a child is born... not exactly that, but when a child is conceived. How is it possible? The method is this: while you are making love, keep repeating this mantra, so when the child is conceived, Om Mani Padme Hum is there from the beginning. For nine months the mother repeats it as often as possible, and whenever possible. When the child is born, the father repeats the mantra, the lama repeats the mantra. "Priest" is an ugly translation, but in English the only translation for lama is priest, but that's not my fault. A lama is not just a priest, he is a prophet too. He comes when the child is born -not a doctor, but the mystic - and he repeats the mantra continuously. As the head of the child emerges, he is repeating; as the child is born, he is born into Om Mani Padme Hum.

The same happens when one falls in love and gets married. The lama is not a Christian priest marrying two people, he is a mystic helping two people to go deep into love. He again repeats the mantra.

Om Mani Padme Hum....

Again it is not what you would call a wedding; it is not a bondage. It is beautiful. Hence in Tibet they have never heard of divorce. You will be surprised... only now, recently, have they heard of it; otherwise for centuries and centuries their people have been joined in love. The very concept of divorce was unknown to them.

Again the same mantra is repeated when a person is dying. The lama repeats it, and so does everybody present. The dying person is in an ocean of Om Mani Padme Hum.

From the very beginning to the end this mantra remains a secret, silent undercurrent in the life of the man.

So don't laugh; try to understand, rather, try to feel. Perhaps that's why I continued with it. In my sane moments I was going to stop. But trust my insanity. The more insane I am, the closer I am to truth.

Om Mani Padme Hum....

I have left the ninth card of Zen because I was tired of Moses, Ramakrishna, Mohammed, Mahavira, Krishnamurti - the whole company. They are good company, but even good company sooner or later becomes nauseating. A good company, just good, becomes tasteless. I dropped out of it. I transcended it and became a real dropout: the tenth bull of Zen. And entering the tenth I have known all that is worth knowing, while the poor fellows in the ninth are playing with toys... religious toys, but toys are toys. Only in the tenth are you beyond. And the tenth resounds in you with the soundless sound of...

Om Mani Padme Hum....