Holidays are not for saints

Maneesha, this is the last talk on the beautiful series, RINZAI: MASTER OF THE IRRATIONAL. To be with Rinzai... it has been a beautiful time. To make him our contemporary, just for a few moments, was pure nectar. This will be the last talk on Rinzai.

Before discussing Rinzai's sutra and the anecdote, Avirbhava, the director-general of the Museum of Gods, has brought a great new member. First I will tell you about the new member of her museum.

His name is Dragon.

"According to the Old Testament, the dragon is said to have descended from the Babylonian female dragon called Tiamet. In Christianity the dragon represents the devil; hence, paintings of numerous saints' lives depict combat between them and a dragon, representing God and the devil.

"Where the West sees the dragon as evil, the East considers him to be benevolent. In China it was said that when he died, the emperor ascended to heaven like a dragon. It was believed that when a dragon ascends to heaven, the pressure of its feet on the clouds causes rain. Also in Chinese mythology the dragon is a messenger of heaven who revealed yin and yang, the two forces of the universe, to the Yellow Emperor.

"In the I-Ching the dragon symbolizes wisdom.

"In Japan, the three-clawed dragon represents the emperor, having both imperial and spiritual power."

This Museum of Gods is immensely significant. It declares the end of all gods. They belong only to the museums. That is the very purpose of the Museum of Gods. Their relevance to life is finished; they can only be remembered as mythologies, as fictions, as exploitations by the priesthood, as pathological inventions of insane people.

The future man will not have a god; the future man will be a god. For long enough we have been under fictitious entities. It is time to declare ourselves free from all fictions.

The new man's god is no more in the heaven, it is in his own being - more intimate, more close.

The new man will not worship the god, the new man will live the god, will sing the god, will dance the god; he himself will be the temple of the god. Hence I have called the new man the buddha.

Now I will call Avirbhava to bring the dragon.

(A GREEN, PAPIER MACHE DRAGON ENTERS GAUTAMA THE BUDDHA AUDITORIUM FROM THE BACK AND STOMPS AROUND THE HALL. EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE IT SPRAYS FROM ITS FANGED MOUTH STEAM AND SMOKE. EVERYBODY IS LAUGHING WHILE ORIENTAL MUSIC PLAYS. LAUGHTER, CHINESE MUSIC, HAND-CLAPPING. SEE PHOTO ON PAGE 190.) The sutra:

'Mind-ground' simply means the empty mind. Only the ground is left, only the foundation is left, and everything else is gone. Even to have dreams you have to be alive. Do you think a dead man can dream? Your life functions as a ground for all your projections, for all your imaginations, for all your gods in heaven and hell, and all kinds of mythologies, theologies and philosophies. But for all, the ground is the mind.

Zen does not go beyond the essential ground of mind. It does not grow any mythology on it, it does not grow any system of beliefs on it; it simply remains with the silent mind - and the silent mind is exactly no-mind. These are different expressions only. You can say 'no-mind' because there are no thoughts; you can call it 'mind-ground' - there are no thoughts either.

This mind-ground can describe things as sacred, as profane, as material, as spiritual, as astral, as ethereal - this mind is capable of naming thousands of things, real and unreal. But it cannot name this man. Rinzai is pointing to his own realization, and the new man that is born out of realization.

The mind-ground cannot give a name to this man - the new man, the man of Tao, or the man of enlightenment.

Why can it not give a name to it? Because a name is a thought, and Zen does not accept any thought, sacred or profane; it accepts only the pure consciousness, the empty heart. Nothing should be echoing in it.

Hence, this mind which can create such great mythologies... Millions of people have lived under the impact of fictitious gods. The whole game is of the mind. It can create God, it can create the devil, it can create anything you want, but not this man. The man who is enlightened is no more. How can you name him? The man of enlightenment is dissolved in the cosmos; now he has no more any form or any boundaries. How can you name him?

So the whole process of naming things, which you think is thinking, is not of any worth; just the very ground of consciousness is valuable. Anything you grow on that ground is futile. It is capable of giving you anything you want. Its power of imagination is immense, knows no limits - but they will all be fictions, hallucinations, mirages. Whenever you come to the truth, the mind is incapable, absolutely impotent and incapable of naming it.

Truth has no name, it is nameless. Your ultimate being has never been named, and there is no way to give it a name. When you find it, you are so absorbed and overwhelmed by it that you disappear; only it remains. The luminosity, the love, the compassion, the grace - all are there, but you have disappeared. Who is going to name it?

Your disappearance means opening the doors of the universal. By disappearing, I mean you disappear in the ocean. Now, when the dewdrop has disappeared in the ocean, where to find it? How to name it? All that you can say is that it has become one with the ocean. It was a small ocean, that's why it could become one with the ocean. It kept itself small, within limits. Today it dropped its limits, slipped from the lotus leaf, disappeared in the ocean. But that does not mean that it has died; it simply means that it has become too big, that you can no longer call it a dewdrop.

Rinzai's last statements... "FOLLOWERS OF THE TAO, GRASP AND USE, BUT NEVER NAME - THIS IS CALLED THE 'MYSTERIOUS PRINCIPLE.'"

Tao is exactly at the same height of understanding as Buddha. The word 'tao' does not mean anything. It was under compulsion that Lao Tzu called it tao - a meaningless word - just as Buddha has called it dhamma.

His whole life Lao Tzu never wrote. Even the emperor insisted that "You should write down your experiences. They will be valuable for the coming centuries."

Lao Tzu said, "You don't know what you are asking for. Nobody can write it, nobody can pronounce it. One can live it, love it, one can be dissolved into it, one can be resurrected into it, but nothing can be said about it. Words are too far away, too much misleading."

His whole life Lao Tzu denied every proposal from the disciples that "You have lived a great life of utter silence, of peace and blissfulness; it will be a great loss to humanity if you don't write down just a small treatise, a few sutras, a few footprints that can show how you reached to this height, in what direction we have to move - just to guide us."

But Lao Tzu said, "I would love to say, but I cannot corrupt the purity of the experience. The moment I say it, it will be corrupted. The words are too small and the experience is immense. Please just forgive me!"

This had been his attitude his whole life, but at the end he said to his disciples, "Now it is time that I retire into the Himalayas. My death is not far away, and I would like to meet my death and welcome her in the right place" - and there cannot be any more right place than the eternal silence of the Himalayas.

It is not only Lao Tzu, but many have moved in their last days to the Himalayas and disappeared in the eternal snow. The Himalayas have a mysterious attraction: because of the height, because of the untrodden paths, there are still thousands of places where man has not reached, which are absolutely unpolluted by man and his ugly radiations.

Lao Tzu took leave of his disciples, but he got into trouble, because the emperor informed the guards on all the ways that go to the Himalayas. There were guards on every way that led to the Himalayas going out of China. He informed the guards, "Wherever you find Lao Tzu crossing the Chinese border, hold him prisoner. Be very respectful, but make a deal with him that if he wants to go to the Himalayas, he has to write the treatise of his experiences - just the essential hints."

He was caught, with great respect, and he was given the cottage of the guard, and he was locked up and told, "Until you write down the essential experience and the steps towards it - we are under strict orders - you will not be allowed to leave China and move into the Himalayas."

Under such loving compulsion, finding no way out, Lao Tzu wrote his book, THE BOOK OF TAO.

He starts from the very first line, "Truth cannot be said. The moment it is said, it becomes untrue."

All those who read this small treatise are warned from the very beginning that these are words, and words cannot carry the wordless silence. This is the preface to his own treatise: "I am being forced, so I am writing it, but this is not the truth. You cannot get the truth from a book." Such honesty!

Rinzai says, "FOLLOWERS OF THE TAO, GRASP AND USE" - they grasp the mind-ground, they grasp their very being, and use it - "BUT NEVER NAME - THIS IS CALLED THE 'MYSTERIOUS PRINCIPLE.'" They get hold of it, they use it in their whole life, they become one with it, but they never say a single word about it, what it is.

You have to live with a master who has attained to it, perhaps in deep silence, sitting with the master.

Your heart and his heart may start synchronizing, dancing in the same tune, getting into a harmony.

Nothing will be said, nothing will be heard, but everything will be understood. Because of this it is called the "mysterious principle." Nobody has said it, nobody has ever heard about it, but thousands of people have lived it.

Religion is not an explanation, it is an experience. It is nothing to be studied, it has to be lived. That's where all the religions have gone wrong. They have become scriptures, they have become temples, churches, synagogues, they have created prayers, rituals, according to the masses. Whatever the masses need they are ready to supply: just remain in their fold, because the presence of the followers is their political power.

Your so-called religions - I want to clarify it, with absolute certainty - are nothing but hidden politics.

Their faces are religious, but those faces are not real, they are masks. Deep inside is pure politics and nothing else. Naturally they have to conform to the masses. It is so laughable, so ridiculous a thing that the religions have to conform to the masses, who know nothing, just in order to keep them in the fold.

I have heard about three rabbis in New York, talking to each other. The first rabbi said, "My synagogue is the most sophisticated, because I even allow people to smoke or drink inside the synagogue while the preacher is preaching. There is no harm in smoking or drinking. This is a modern idea of a synagogue."

The second rabbi said, "That is nothing. I allow people even to make love - what is the harm? The preacher is preaching and people are enjoying, loving each other. Love is the message!"

The third one said, "You are still far behind my synagogue. My synagogue is the last word, because in front of my synagogue hangs a big board saying that on Jewish holidays the synagogue will remain closed!"

Now, you cannot improve on that.

Considering the people... Gurdjieff used to say, "If you consider the people, you will never be religious." Never consider anybody. Just search for your truth and live accordingly, even if it goes against the whole world. Don't make any compromises or any considerations. A man of authentic religion is a man of no compromises and no considerations.

These small symbols show the very fine quality of the man. They are indications, for those who can understand, that he is preparing himself to meet death. Obviously he should put on his finest robes and seat himself in zazen. He should meet death in a beautiful silence of meditation.

I have explained to you that Zen calls what in India we have for thousands of years called the third eye - the eye that looks within - the true eye of the law. These two eyes look outwards, and it is very symbolic that outside everything is always divided in two. If there is night, there is day; if there is love, there is hate; if there is friend, there is enemy.

To look outside it is absolutely necessary that you should have two eyes. But to look inside, these two eyes should melt into one. And as you turn inwards, there is only one eye of the law, one eye of Tao, or simply the third eye.

He asked his followers before his last breath, "AFTER I AM GONE, DO NOT DESTROY MY TREASURY OF THE TRUE EYE OF THE LAW. I have given you a treasury, I have introduced you to the mysterious principle, I have made you aware of the third eye; don't let anybody destroy it."

HIS CHIEF DISCIPLE, SANSHO, SAID, "WHO WOULD HAVE THE CHEEK TO DO THAT? Who can destroy it, who will have the guts, the cheek to do it?"

Sansho is responding exactly... Shouting "Kwatz!" was introduced by Rinzai into the Zen tradition.

When you cannot answer a question, when a question is not answerable, then a good shout immediately puts the other person, at least for a moment, in silence. That is your answer. You are saying, "Be silent and you will know!" - not saying so much in words, but just giving a good shout. The man simply is shocked.

For a moment the mind becomes alert: "What is going on? I have asked a very logical, rational question and this fellow shouts at me!" And the shout comes so quickly, without reason and rhyme, that the mind cannot work out the meaning of it. So it becomes silent - at least for a few moments.

Sansho gave a good shout, "Kwatz!", but that was not the right thing.

RINZAI COMMENTED, "WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT A BLIND DONKEY WOULD DESTROY IT?" He is saying that it is always destroyed by the blindness of man. Before a blind man you may shout as much as you want; it won't help him to have the third eye. He cannot even look outwards, how can he look inwards? He does not know what 'look' means.

Every great religious peak is destroyed after the death of the master by blind donkeys. You will not be able to recognize them, because these blind donkeys are not the donkeys you know. These blind donkeys are the pundits, the rabbis, the bishops, the popes, the shankaracharyas. These blind donkeys go on destroying everything, because they have to manipulate the public mind. They are not concerned about saving the truth. Who cares about the truth? - the real question is how many followers you have.

Everybody cares about having more power, and there is only one power outside, and that is the power of having the masses behind you. But to have the masses behind you, you have to be behind them. You have to come to all kinds of compromises, otherwise they will not follow you.

They have already had a prejudiced mind for centuries. They know what is right and what is wrong - and they know nothing! They know what is truth, what is God, what is heaven, and you cannot change their conditionings. It will be easier for them to leave you and go to some other fold, where their prejudices are nourished.

It is a very strange situation: where your ignorance is nourished you feel happy, and where your ignorance is exposed and killed you feel very unhappy, because you are so much identified with your ignorance. This is your blind donkey-ness.

Rinzai is saying that there is no way to save the third eye, except if you have it and you go on transmitting it to other recipients. It cannot be saved in scriptures, it cannot be saved in any other way. The only way to save it is to have it - and have it in such abundance that you can share with others.

RINZAI THEN DIED, IN ZAZEN - sitting in the Buddha-posture. THE YEAR WAS 866 OR 867, AND HE LEFT BEHIND HIM TWENTY-TWO ENLIGHTENED DISCIPLES.

It is a great contribution to human consciousness. To leave twenty-two enlightened disciples is to raise the level of consciousness - a single man's great effort and great contribution. And throughout these eleven hundred years Rinzai's disciples have continued to become enlightened. It is still a living stream, flowing, it has not got lost into a desert.

The desert is that of the scholars. That desert is being created by the universities and the colleges and the schools. In that desert everything gets lost. In the vast deserts of Sahara, small streams of consciousness simply get lost, rather than reaching to the ocean. All scholarship leads you away from the ocean, because all these scholars are the servants of the vested interests. They have a certain interest, and for that interest they can compromise everything - and they have compromised everything.

If he has not created living fires around him, every great master is going to be forgotten. Humanity loses much when a master is forgotten. There have been thousands of mystics, and even their names are forgotten.

Anando is compiling a book on all the mystics I have spoken on. She talked to Professor Coleman Barks. He was very much interested; he wanted to publish it himself. But he said, "From where has he found these three hundred? I have not even heard these names - three hundred buddhas!" He has left, otherwise I would have sent him the message that I am still living and I am going to speak on at least two hundred more. There are more still, but even their names are lost.

You are listening to people and their sutras which have been forgotten by the majority of humanity.

My effort is to revive all those golden peaks in your consciousness, so you can have the trust that "If so many people became enlightened, there is no reason why I cannot become enlightened."

My speaking on these people has a single purpose: to create a trust in you about yourself, that your destiny is to be a buddha.

Ikkyu wrote:

That is another version of total relaxation with existence, another version of let-go, another version of suchness, thisness, isness.

He is saying, "WHETHER I ELEVATE THIS MESSAGE OR PUT IT DOWN, EVERYTHING UNDER THE HEAVENS IS THE IMPERIAL DOMAIN. I SALUTE AND SAY, 'SO BE IT... SO BE IT.' Whatever happens, my absolute determination, my absolute commitment is that whatever happens is good.

So be it."

It may seem sometimes that something is a misfortune - but still Ikkyu is right. Many times blessings come in disguise, and those who are ready to accept even misfortunes joyfully, they transform the misfortune into a joy. Just by accepting them, without any resistance, is the way of transforming them into a beautiful space.

Whatever happens, don't have any grudge, don't have any complaint against existence. That is the purest message of Zen.

Question 1:

Maneesha has asked:

Maneesha, it is not an uphill task, it is a downhill task! The ego is always ready for an uphill task; it is a question of downhill. To be just natural, simple, nobody, cannot be an uphill task. So first change the idea: it is not an uphill task, it is downhill.

And secondly you say, "Unless I'm actually sitting in front of you, remembering to witness seems such an uphill task!"

You are making it uphill. If it is possible in front of me, what prevents you when you are not sitting in front of me? If it is possible in front of me, then it is possible anywhere.

And you say, "Unless I'm actually sitting in front of you..." But how can you be certain that I am actually here? You don't have any proof of my being here. You cannot believe your eyes - they deceive you many times. It may be simply just that the whole assembly has fallen asleep and you are all dreaming me; I am the dream of you all.

You cannot determine whether anything outside your witnessing has any reality or not. Because of this, the great philosopher Shankara continuously insisted and proved to the whole of India that the outside world is just a dream, maya, illusion. And there are parallels in the West: Bradley and Bosanquet both tried the same idea - that you cannot say whether the outside is real or unreal, because in a dream you start believing in the dream.

Your believing is not very reliable. In a dream, do you ever doubt, "Perhaps I am in a dream"? In a dream you are so deeply involved that the dream becomes actual, so actual that if you are having a nightmare, and a lion or a dragon is just sitting on your chest, you will wake up out of fear, and you will experience a great relief that it was a dream. But even the dream has its effects: your breathing shows as if you have been running fast, your perspiration shows that your body has believed, your mind has believed, that the dragon was a reality.

There is no way to prove that the outside is not another dream - maybe a little longer, seventy years long; maybe a special dream that when you go to sleep it waits for you, and when you wake up it continues again. But there is no way to prove rationally that the outside is really there. It may be, it may not be.

So don't be worried about my actuality. I may be just a device... in fact, I am a device. If you can become a witness in front of me, you know that you have the capacity to become a witness. Then there is no reason to make it an uphill task. Just be playful about it.

I know in the beginning you will forget many times. Just try to understand this simple thing: when you forget, don't be bothered; otherwise, what happens is you forget witnessing, and then you remember, "My God, I forgot!" - and now you start repenting. That is also forgetting again. What you have forgotten is forgotten. Now you have remembered, continue.

Never repent for those moments which have gone. They are gone. If you start repenting, you will be destroying more moments. And man's mind is such that it can forget. Now that I have said, "Don't repent!" it will repent, and then it will repent that it has repented, and the witnessing will be far away.

So just make it simple: when you forget, you forget. That chapter is closed. Now you are remembering - remember, witness. Slowly, slowly the gaps of forgetting will become smaller, fewer.

It needs a little time. You are not seasonal flowers which appear in a few days and disappear in a few days. You are flowers of eternity.

So there is no need to worry about it; if for a few moments you forget witnessing, it is perfectly okay.

Now, witness! Don't give a single thought for that which is gone. It is natural, don't feel guilty.

I never want anyone who belongs to me to feel guilty for anything. Whatever has happened, so be it! Now you are aware, witness. You will fall again, many times you will forget, many times you will wake up. This is the natural process. It is nothing personal; it has to happen to everybody.

So take it easy, and just go on growing, more and more witnessing and less and less forgetting. A time comes - has to come - when even if you want to forget, you cannot. Then you will be angry with me - really angry that "Now I want to forget and I cannot forget!" Now you are very happily trying to witness, but the day you will be a perfect witness, you will be angry at me, because there is some beauty in forgetting a few things. But you cannot forget... your witnessing has become so solid that you cannot take even a holiday. Holidays are not for saints.

Now Gurudayal Singh has declared the time for the saints.

Old Herbie the tramp knocks at the door of an inn named George and the Dragon.

A big woman opens the door and says, "What do you want?"

"Could you spare a poor man a bite to eat?" asks Herbie.

"No!" screams the woman, slamming the door.

A few minutes later, Herbie knocks again.

"Please, miss," asks the tramp, "could I have a little something to eat?"

"Get out, you good-for-nothing!" shouts the woman, "and don't you ever come back!"

After a few minutes, Herbie knocks on the door again.

The woman answers it.

"Pardon me," says Herbie, "but could I have a few words with George this time?"

You will get it in the night, exactly in the middle of the night!

Donald Dixteen is standing at a public urinal, when big black Rufus runs in. Rufus frantically unzips his pants, whips out his twelve inch whacker, and starts pissing buckets.

"Wow!" cries Rufus with relief. "I just made it!"

"Really?" says Donald, eyeing Rufus' massive machinery. "Will you make me one too?"

It is Halloween night in Washington and there is a Ghosts and Ghouls party at the White House.

Nancy Reagan, George Bush and all the White House staff are dressed up as monsters and witches, with hideous, ghostly masks. Everyone is waiting excitedly for Ronald Reagan himself to appear.

"I can't wait to see Ronnie's costume," says Nancy, who is dressed as Dracula's daughter, with a carving knife stuck through her neck.

"Me neither," replies Bush, who is disguised as Frankenstein for the evening. "Last year Ronald really scared the shit out of everybody when he was carried in in that coffin!"

Just then, the door opens and in walks Reagan. But to everyone's disappointment he is dressed as usual, in his dark-grey business suit. In his hand is a little black box.

"Oh, Ronald!" cries Nancy. "What a shame! We all thought you were really going to scare us this year."

"Scare you?" exclaims Reagan, looking round at the assembled ghosts. "I'm seventy-five years old, I'm senile, physically weak and mentally retarded - and with this little box I can destroy the whole world! Doesn't that scare you?"

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.

Now look inwards, with all your consciousness, with your total life energy, and with an urgency as if this is going to be your last moment.

Just like a spear, move towards the center. At the center you are just a witness, a pure silent space, witnessing the body, the mind - also witnessing the flowers showering on you, also witnessing that your individuality is dissolving, that you are becoming a part of the ocean.

At this moment, when you are at the center of your being, you are a buddha. And remember, the buddha is not made of bones and blood and marrow. The buddha is made only of witnessing.

Whenever you are only a witness, you are a buddha.

And this is so simple, because it is so natural. It is your very being.

This eternity... this universe is absolutely happy with you, is rejoicing with your silence.

To make the witnessing absolutely clear,

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax, let go. Remember the last words of Ikkyu, "So be it...."

Utterly silent, serene, the Buddha Auditorium has become a lake of consciousness. Individuals are gone; there is not even a ripple on the lake.

You are blessed. At this moment, nowhere else in the world are ten thousand buddhas sitting in meditation, witnessing and creating a tremendously powerful energy-field.

We are trying to revive a golden past - not of the ordinary masses, but only of the buddhas. The world has only one possibility to survive, and that possibility is to spread buddhahood around the earth as fast as you can. Otherwise, within twelve years this immensely beautiful planet will be simply dead - nothing alive, not even a wild flower. And it is unfortunate because this is the only planet in the whole universe which has grown to the point where one can become a buddha, where one can become an immortal.

At this moment you are immortal.

At this moment death does not exist for you.

At this moment you have the very secret miraculous principle in your hands. Use it, be it - there is no name for it - sing it, dance it, but remain utterly silent about it. Saying anything about it is betraying the miraculous principle.

Spread the fire of buddhahood to all the nooks and corners of the earth. That is the only protection against nuclear weapons.

Now collect as much of the experience as you can before Nivedano calls you back, and persuade the buddha - go on persuading every day. Inch by inch he will come closer to the circumference.

Bring him with you.

Everybody is pregnant with a buddha. Just it takes a little time... because for centuries you have never thought about it. It is so new to think that you are a buddha, so rebellious to think that you are a buddha.

But as far as I am concerned, this is a simple fact, a simple truth.

Gather as much as you can.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Come back, but come with the same serenity, silence, grace, beauty, and sit for a few moments remembering the space you have been in, remembering the path, the golden path, that you have followed to reach your center.

Remember that at the center only witnessing is the truth. Everything dies, only witnessing remains.

Witnessing is our eternity, but live it in your actions, in your words, in your responses, in your silences, in your songs, in your dances.

We can create a world of great splendor, in spite of all the idiots who are determined to destroy it.

Okay, Maneesha?