The goose is out!

The first question:

Anand Bhavo, the goose has never been in, the goose has always been out. It is a Zen koan. First you have to understand the meaning of Zen and the meaning of a koan.

Zen is not a religion, not a dogma, not a creed, Zen is not even a quest, an inquiry; it is non-philosophical. The fundamental of the Zen approach is that all is as it should be, nothing is missing. This very moment everything is perfect. The goal is not somewhere else, it is here, it is now. Tomorrows don't exist. This very moment is the only reality. Hence in Zen there is no distinction between methods and goals, means and goals.

All the philosophies of the world and all the religions of the world create duality; howsoever they may go on talking about non-duality, they create a split personality in man.

That has been the greatest calamity that has befallen humanity: all the do-gooders have created a schizophrenic man. When you divide reality into means and goals you divide man himself, because for man, man is the closest reality to man. His consciousness becomes split. He lives here but not really; he is always there, somewhere else. He is always searching, always inquiring; never living, never being, always doing; getting richer, getting powerful, getting spiritual, getting holier, saintly -- always more and more. And this constant hankering for more creates his tense, anguished state, and meanwhile he is missing all that is made available by existence. He is interested in the far away and God is close by. His eyes are focused on the stars and God is within him. Hence the most fundamental thing to understand about Zen is:

The goose has NEVER been in. Let me tell you the story how this koan started:

A great philosophical official, Riko, once asked the strange Zen Master, Nansen, to explain to him the old koan of the goose in the bottle.

"If a man puts a gosling into a bottle," said Riko, "and feeds him until he is full-grown, how can the man get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle?"

Nansen gave a great clap with his hands and shouted, "Riko!"

"Yes, Master," said the official with a start.

"See," said Nansen, "the goose is out!"

It is only a question of seeing, it is only a question of becoming alert, awake, it is only a question of waking up. The goose is in the bottle if you are in a dream; the goose has never been in the bottle if you are awake. And in the dream there is no way to take the goose out of the bottle. Either the goose will die or the bottle will have to be broken, and both alternatives are not allowed: neither has the bottle to be broken nor has the goose to be killed. Now, a fully-grown goose in a small bottle... how can you take it out? This is called a koan.

A koan is not an ordinary puzzle; it is not a puzzle because it cannot be solved. A puzzle is that which has a possibility of being solved; you just have to look for the right answer. You will find it -- it only needs intelligence to find the answer to the puzzle; but a puzzle is not really insoluble.

A koan is insoluble; you cannot solve it, you can only DISSOLVE it. And the way to dissolve it is to change the very plane of your being from dreaming to wakefulness. In the dream the goose is in the bottle and there is no way to bring it out of the bottle without breaking the bottle or killing the goose -- in the dream. Hence, as far as the dream is concerned, the puzzle is impossible; nothing can be done about it.

But there is a way out -- which has nothing to do with the puzzle, remember. You have to wake up. That has nothing to do with the bottle and nothing to do with the goose either. You have to wake up. It has something to do with YOU. That's why Nansen did not answer the question.

Riko asked, "If a man puts a gosling into a bottle and feeds him until he is full-grown, how can the man get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle?"

Nansen didn't answer. On the other hand, he gave a great clap with his hands and shouted, "Riko!"

Now, this is not an answer to the question -- this has nothing to do with the question at all -- it is irrelevant, inconsistent. But it solves it; in fact, it dissolves it. The moment he shouted, "Riko!" the official with a start said, "Yes, Master" The whole plane of his being is transformed by a simple strategy.

A Master is not a teacher; he does not teach you, he simply devises methods to wake you up. That clap is a method, that clap simply brought Riko into the present. And it was so unexpected... When you are asking such a spiritual koan you don't expect the Master to answer you with a loud clap and then shout, "Riko!"

Suddenly he is brought from the past, from the future. Suddenly for a moment he forgets the whole problem. Where is the bottle and where is the goose? There is only the Master, in a strange posture, clapping and shouting for Riko. Suddenly the whole problem is dropped. He has slipped out of the problem without even knowing that he slipped out of it. He has slipped out of the problem as a snake slips out of its old skin. For a moment time has stopped. For a moment the clock has stopped. For a moment the mind has stopped. For a moment there is nothing. The Master, the sound of the clap, and a sudden awakening. In that very moment the Master says, "See! See, the goose is out!" It is dissolved.

A koan can only be dissolved but can never be solved. A puzzle can never be dissolved but can be solved. So remember, a koan is not a puzzle.

But when people who are accustomed to continuous thinking, logical reasoning, start studying Zen, they take a false step from the very beginning. Zen cannot be studied; it has to be lived, it has to be imbibed -- imbibed from a living Master. It is a transmission beyond words, a transmission of the lamp. The lamp is invisible.

Now, anybody watching this whole situation -- Riko asking a question, the Master clapping and shouting -- would not have found anything very spiritual in it, would not have found any great philosophy, may have come back very frustrated. But something transpired -- something which is not visible and can never be visible.

It happens only when the silence of the Master penetrates the silence of the disciple, when two silences meet and merge; then immediately there is seeing. The Master has eyes, the disciple has eyes, but the disciple's eyes are closed. A device is needed, some method, so that the disciple can open his eyes without any effort of his own. If he makes an effort he will miss the point, because who will make the effort?

Christmas Humphreys, one of the great lovers of Zen in the West, the founder of the Buddhist Society of England and the man who made Zen Buddhism very famous in the Western world, writes about this koan, and you will see the difference. He says:

"There is a method of taking the problem in flank, as it were. It will be nonsense to the rational-minded, but such will read no further. Those who read on will expect increasing nonsense, for sense, the suburban villas of rational thought, will soon be left behind, and the mind will be free on the illimitable hills of its own inherent joy. Here, then, is the real solution to the problem of the opposites.

"Shall I tell it you? Consider a live goose in a bottle. How to get it out without hurting the goose or breaking the bottle? The answer is simple -- 'There, it's out!"'

Now, the whole point is lost: it becomes philosophical. First, Christmas Humphreys thinks Zen is part of Buddhism; that is to begin with a wrong door, with a wrong step. Zen has nothing to do with Buddhism. It certainly has something to do with the Buddha, but nothing to do with Buddhism as such, just as Sufism has nothing to do with Islam, Hassidism has nothing to do with Judaism, Tantra has nothing to do with Hinduism. Yes, Tantra certainly has something to do with Shiva and Sufism has something to do with Mohammed and Hassidism has something to do with Moses, but not with the traditions, not with the conventions, not with the theologies.

A Moses alive, a Mohammed alive, can transmit something which cannot be said, can show something which cannot be said, can create a certain vibe around him which can trigger enlightenment in many people, but without any explanation, without any logical proof.

Enlightenment is almost like a love affair. Just as you fall in love -- you cannot rationalize it; it is below reason -- in the same way you fall into enlightenment. It is above reason: you fall above words.

There is a beautiful story of a Master who was staying at a disciple's house. The disciple was a little worried about the Master because his ways were strange, unexpected. He could do anything! He was almost thought to be mad. So not to create any trouble for the neighborhood

-- because in the night he might start dancing, singing, shouting, sermonizing to nobody and create a disturbance in the neighborhood -- they put him in the basement and locked him up in the basement, so that even if he went and did something nobody would hear him. They closed all the windows, all the doors, and locked them.

In the middle of the night they were suddenly awakened. Somebody was rolling about on the roof with such a loud laughter that a great crowd had gathered all around and they were asking, "What is the matter?"

They rushed up, they found the Master rolling on the roof. They asked, "What is the matter? How did you manage? We locked you in the basement just to avoid such a scene!"

The Master said, "That's why I am laughing. Suddenly I started falling upwards. I cannot believe it myself! It has never happened before, falling upwards!"

It is a beautiful story. Enlightenment is falling upwards just as love is falling downwards.

But something is similar in both; the falling -- unreasonable, unexplainable, inexpressible.

Only those to whom it has happened know, and even when it has happened you cannot explain it to anybody to whom it has not happened yet.

Christmas Humphreys calls Zen "Zen Buddhism" That is starting in the wrong direction from the very beginning. Zen is not Buddhism -- the essential core of the heart of Buddha, certainly, but it is the essential core of Moses too, the essential core of Zarathustra too, Lao Tzu too. It is the essential core of all those who have become enlightened, of all those who have awakened from their dream, of all those who have seen that the goose is out, that the goose has never been in, that the problem was not a problem at all in the first place, hence no solution is needed.

Christmas Humphreys says: "There is a method of taking the problem in flank, as it were.

It will be nonsense to the rational-minded..."

He himself is rational-minded; otherwise, it is not nonsense. Nonsense is something below sense. Zen is supra-sense, not nonsense; it is above sense. It is something far beyond the reaches of reason. Logic is a very ordinary game; anybody who has a little intelligence can play the game. The moment you go beyond logic then you enter into the world of Zen. It is not nonsense, it is supra-sense. His very use of the word "nonsense" shows a deep-down bias towards rationality.

He says: "... but such will read no further. Those who read on will expect increasing nonsense, for sense, the suburban villas of rational thought, will soon be left behind... " They are not left behind, because if you leave something behind you are on the same track.

You have left a milestone behind, but the road is the same, the path is not different. Maybe you have gone a mile ahead, but your dimension has not changed. The difference is only of quantity, not of quality.

Reason is not only left behind, reason is transcended, surpassed. There is a difference, a great difference, a difference that makes the difference.

I have heard a story -- it happened in the Second World War:

In a thick part of the Burmese jungle, a small plane was left by the army. They were in a hurry, they were retreating, and for some mechanical reason they could not manage to take it with them. The primitives found the plane; they could not understand what it was. They figured out that it must be some kind of bullock cart -- that was the only possible thing for them to think; the bullock cart was the ultimate vehicle in their vision. So they started using the plane as a bullock cart, and they enjoyed it. It was the best bullock cart they had ever found!

Then somebody passed by -- a man who lived a little further away from the primitive tribe but was part of the tribe. He knew, he had come to experience cars, trucks, buses. He said, "This is not a bullock cart, this is a car, and I know something about cars" So he fixed it, and they were immensely amazed that without horses, without bulls, the machine was working. It was such a toy! Every morning, every evening, they enjoyed just looking at it again and again from all sides, entering it, sitting in it; and because there were not many roads, even to go a few feet was a great excitement.

Then one day a pilot passed by the primitive forest and he said, "What are you doing? This is an airplane, it can fly!"

He took two primitives with him, and when they left the ground they could not believe it.

This was absolutely beyond their imagination, beyond all their dreams. They used to think that only Gods could fly; they had heard stories about Gods flying in the sky. Yes, they had seen airplanes in the sky, but they had always believed they belonged to the Gods.

Now, the same mechanism can be used as a bullock cart or as a car, but between the bullock cart and the car the distinction is only of quantity, not of quality. The moment the airplane takes off from the ground it changes its plane: it surpasses the bullock cart, the car. It moves in a totally new dimension.

So reason is not left behind, reason is simply transcended. Hence, Christmas Humphreys calling it nonsense, irrational, or thinking that reason has been left behind is still thinking in terms of rationality.

He says: "... and the mind will be free..."

Now, that is absolutely stupid; the mind will not be free. When you enter into the world of Zen there is no-mind. Zen is equivalent to no-mind. It is not freedom of the mind, it is freedom from the mind, and there is a lot of difference, an unbridgeable difference. The mind is not free, you are free of the mind. The mind is no longer there, free or unfree, the mind has simply ceased. You have gone through a new door which was always available to you but you had never knocked on it -- the door of being, the door of eternity.

Zen, the very word "Zen" comes from the Sanskrit word DHYANA. DHYANA means meditation, but the word "meditation" does not carry its total significance. "Meditation" again gives you the feeling that mind is doing something: mind meditating, concentrating, contemplating, but mind is there. DHYANA simply means a state of no-mind, no concentration, no contemplation, no meditation, in fact -- but just a silence, a deep, profound silence where all thoughts have disappeared; where there is no ripple in the lake of consciousness; when the consciousness is functioning just like a mirror reflecting all that is -- the stars, the trees, the birds, the people, all that is -- simply reflecting it without any distortion, without any interpretation, without bringing in your prejudices. That's what your mind is: your prejudices, your ideologies, your dogmas, your habits.

Christmas Humphreys says: "... and the mind will be free on the illimitable hills of its own inherent joy."

This is real nonsense! First, "mind will be free". Mind can never be free. Freedom and mind never meet. Mind means bondage, mind is a prison. In the mind you live an encapsulated life, surrounded by all kinds of thoughts, theories, systems, philosophies, surrounded by the whole past of humanity, all kinds of superstitions -- Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Buddhist, Jaina; political, social, economic, religious. Either your mind is made up of the bricks of the Bible, the Koran, the Gita, or maybe DAS KAPITAL, or the Communist Manifesto. You may have made your prison differently from others, you may have chosen a different architect, but the prison is the same. The architect can be Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein -- you can choose, prisons come in all shapes and all sizes -- and then the interior decoration is up to you. You can put beautiful paintings inside, you can carpet it wall to wall, you can paint it according to your likes and dislikes, you can make a few changes here and there, a window on the left or on the right, a curtain of this material or that, but a prison is a prison.

Mind as such is a prison, and everybody is living in the prison. Unless you get out of the prison you will never know what freedom is. Your prison can be very cozy, comfortable, convenient, it can be very well decorated, golden, studded with diamonds... It will be difficult to leave it -- you have worked so hard to create it -- it is not going to be easy. But a prison is a prison; made of gold or made of mud, it makes no difference. You will never know the infinity of freedom, you will never know the beauty and the splendor of freedom; your splendor will is. You will never know that the goose is always out. You will live in all kinds of dreams. Howsoever beautiful they are, dreams are dreams, and sooner or later all dreams are shattered.

But mind is self-perpetuating. If one dream shatters it immediately creates another dream -- in fact, it always keeps one ready. Before the old one is shattered it supplies you with a new one -- a better dream, more refined, more sophisticated, more scientific, more technological -- and again you are infatuated, again the desire arises: "Why not try it? Maybe other dreams have failed, but that does not necessarily mean that all dreams will fail. One may succeed."

That hope goes on lingering; that hope keeps you running after dreams. And when death comes, one finds that one's whole life has been nothing but the same stuff as dreams are made of: "... A tale/Told by an idiot/Full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing." But this is how millions of people are living.

Christmas Humphreys says: "... and the mind will be free on the illimitable hills of its own inherent joy."

This shows that he never understood even a single dewdrop of the Zen experience. He became the propagator of Zen philosophy in the West, but not knowing what he was doing, not experiencing anything of what he was talking about.

The mind cannot reach "the illimitable hills of its own inherent joy"; the mind has no inherent capacity for joy. The mind is the cause of all misery; it knows nothing of joy. It only thinks about joy, and its thinking about joy is also nothing but an imagination against the suffering in which it lives.

If you ask the mind to define joy, its definition will be negative; it will simply say. "There will be no suffering, there will be no pain, there will be no death." But this is all negative definition; it says nothing about bliss, it simply speaks about painlessness. But the goal of painlessness is not of any worth. Even if you are without pain will you find it worth living and for how long? Even if you don't have any illness that does not mean that you have the well-being of health; that is a totally different quality. A person may be medically fit, there may be nothing wrong as far as the diagnosis of the physician goes, but if he is not feeling an overflowing joy it is not health -- an absence of disease perhaps, but not the presence of health. The absence of disease is not equivalent to the presence of health; that's a totally different phenomenon.

You may not be miserable; that does not mean that you are blissful. You may be simply in a limbo, neither blissful nor miserable, which is a far worse situation than being miserable, because the miserable person at least tries to get out of it. The person who lives in a limbo, just on the boundary line, neither miserable nor blissful, cannot get out of misery because he is not in misery. He cannot enter into bliss because there is no push from behind; the misery is not hitting him hard enough so that he can take a jump. He will remain stuck, stagnant.

Misery is a negative state, bliss is a positive state, but the mind knows only misery. The mind cannot know "the illimitable hills of its own inherent joy" because there is nothing in it.

The mind is only a creation of the society to help you perform your social duties efficiently.

The mind is a strategy of the establishment to manipulate you, to enslave you, to keep you as unintelligent as possible, because the intelligent person is dangerous.

In the whole of the Bible there is not a single statement praising intelligence. It is full of all kinds of rubbish, but there is not a single statement in praise of intelligence. Superstition is praised, belief is praised, all kinds of stupid things are praised.

All the religions, organized religions, have been trying to make man a robot, a machine, and they have almost succeeded. That's why there are so few Buddhas, so few Jesuses. The reason is simple: societies, factories, the state, the church, the nation -- they are in a deep conspiracy to destroy the small child, who is very vulnerable, delicate and helpless.

You can destroy him. And the basic strategy for destruction is to create a mind, impose a mind on him, so that he forgets his innermost qualities of joy, he forgets the innocence that he brought from the sources of existence, so that he forgets all that is beautiful and becomes only a cog in the wheel of society. He has to be a good servant, he has to be a good mechanic, he has to be a good station-master, a good professor, this and that, but he has not to be a divine being, he has not to function blissfully.

The society is very afraid of blissful people for the simple reason that bliss is such a tremendous experience that one can sacrifice one's life for it but one cannot sacrifice one's bliss for anything else. One lives for bliss, one dies for bliss, once one has known what bliss is. Hence the blissful person is absolutely beyond the imprisoning forces of the society. The society can only rule the miserable, the church can only exploit the miserable.

And Christmas Humphreys says: "Here, then, is the real solution to the problem of the opposites."

There is no "problem of the opposites." Opposites are not opposites, they are complementaries, hence there is no problem as such. Darkness and light are one phenomenon, two aspects of the same coin. Life and death are inseparable, you cannot separate them -- how can you make them opposites? They are complementaries, they help each other. Hence there is no problem and there is no need for any solution.

And Zen is not a solution to opposites, it is a transcendence, it is a higher vision -- a bird's-eye view from where all dualities look stupid.

The most important thing that happened to the first man who walked on the moon was that he suddenly forgot that he was an American. Suddenly the whole earth was one, there were no boundaries, because there is no map on the earth. The American continent, the African continent, the Asian continent, this country and that country all disappeared. Not that he made any effort to put all the opposing camps together; there was not even a Soviet Russia or an America, the whole earth was just simply one.

And the first words that were uttered by the American were "My beloved earth!" This is transcendence. For a moment he had forgotten all conditionings: "My beloved earth!" Now the whole earth belonged to him.

This is what actually happens in a state of silence: the whole existence is yours and all opposites disappear into each other, supporting, dancing with each other. It becomes an orchestra.

Christmas Humphreys says, "Shall I tell it you? Consider..."

Now, look how just small changes make great differences: "Shall I tell it you? Consider..."

This is the way philosophy moves, not Zen: "Consider..." It is not a question of consideration; either you know or you don't know.

The Master Nansen did not say, "Consider, now I will give a great clap. Consider, now I will shout, 'Riko!' and you have to say, 'Yes, Master!' Then I will say, 'See, the goose is out!"'

Then the whole point would have been lost.

Just a few days ago in a darshan meeting in the evening I called Nirupa. She had broken one of her hands. She is one of my mediums, but now she cannot participate in the dancing.

She was just sitting in the front line and I called her. For a moment she hesitated and everybody laughed, because what was she going to do with one hand? But Zen is done with one hand -- the sound of one hand clapping! -- and she did well. Of course, only I could hear the sound, but the sound of one hand clapping... Even when you are making a sound with two hands clapping the energy is one. Your left hand and your right hand are not two, they are joined in you. They are not opposites, they are complementary, they belong to one being.

All opposites belong to one being, and it is not a question of consideration. If you consider, you take all the juice out of the beautiful koan.

"Consider,' he says, "a live goose in a bottle. How to get it out without hurting the goose or breaking the bottle?"

He cannot even say "without killing the goose." A proper Englishman! "Without hurting the goose or breaking the bottle." In fact, even to say "breaking the bottle" his heart must be breaking! "The answer is simple..."

It is not simple. In the first place it is not an answer either. "There, it is out!" He has destroyed the whole beauty of the koan. But habits die very hard. It is just the way of thinking, the way of the mind.

The Pope was given a pair of red silk slippers with the initials T.I.F inscribed on them.

When His Holiness asked what the letters stood for, he was told, "Toes In First:'

Anand Bhavo, you ask me:

It has always been out, it has never been in. It is only a question of dreaming.

Wake up!

The second question:

Anand Wolfgang, it is good that you have not found it yet. I hope that you will never find it, ever, because Germans tend to find it!

It is said philosophy is like a blind man searching on a dark night in a dark room for a black cat which is not there. But Germans find it! They have given the greatest philosophers to the world: Immanuel Kant and Hegel and Fichte and Marx and Feuerbach and so on and so forth.

It is good, Wolfgang, that you say:

Love is not possible at all, because philosophy means logic and logic cannot be loving.

Logic is the foundation of science but not the foundation of life. Logic is applicable to dead things, to objects, because the basic method of logic is dissection. The moment you dissect something you kill it, so if you want to find life through logic you will never find it; the very method prohibits it.

You can cut a rose flower, you can dissect it, you can put all the ingredients separately into different bottles methodically labelled, but one thing will be missing: there will be no beauty to be found and no life to be found, no joy to be found, no dance of the rose flower in the wind, in the rain, in the sun; they will all be gone. There will be a few chemicals, but those chemicals are not the rose flower, those chemicals were simply the situation in which the rose has appeared. They don't constitute the rose, they only constituted the situation for the appearance of the rose. If you take them away, the rose disappears into its invisible world.

It is like dissecting a dancer -- do you think you will find something like dance inside?

You will find bones, you will find all kinds of nasty things, but you will not find a dance. You can cut the throat of a singer, but you will not find the song -- and you had always believed that the song came from the throat. The throat is only a vehicle; the song comes from the beyond. The throat can be a good vehicle or a bad vehicle, that is a different matter, but it is only a vehicle. By dissecting the vehicle you cannot find that which was descending on it from the world of the beyond.

Love and logic never meet, cannot meet. Logic means the outward journey, love means the inward journey. Logic means dissection, love means finding the organic unity. Logic thinks in terms of the many, the multiple.

In fact, scientists should stop calling the universe "universe," they should call it "multiverse." "Universe" is a poetic name given by lovers; universe means one, "uni."

According to science it is not a universe, it is many, it is a multiverse. Only lovers know the unity, thinkers cannot know unity.

And in the unity of the whole one finds love and one finds wisdom. Wisdom is the shadow of love; wherever there is love there is wisdom. When love is alive there is dance, there is song, there is beauty; those are all the qualities of wisdom. If you think logic can give you wisdom then you will have to decide one thing very clearly, and that is that knowledge has to be taken as wisdom. Then logic can give you wisdom, but then knowledge becomes equivalent to, synonymous with, wisdom -- and knowledge is not synonymous with wisdom.

Knowledge is all borrowed, rubbish; you have gathered it from others.

Wisdom is the explosion of your own consciousness. Wisdom is intrinsic; it does not come from the outside, it explodes within you and spreads towards the outer world. It is like light radiating: you share it, you don't accumulate it. Knowledge has to be begged for, wisdom has to be shared. They are totally different dimensions.

Philosophy, Wolfgang, cannot give you love or wisdom, but it can go on giving you hope.

And if philosophy is the answer, it must have been a silly question.

Remember it, if you can find any answer through philosophy, that simply proves one thing: that your question was silly. If the question is really significant, philosophy has no answer. You will have to look in a different direction. That direction I call Zen, that direction I call awakening -- not theorizing, philosophizing, but becoming silent; not becoming more knowledgeable but dropping all knowledge, discarding it, so that you can be empty, utterly empty. In emptiness there is clarity, there is cleanliness, there is purity, there is innocence, a childlike wonder and awe. And those are the moments of love and wisdom growing in you; they grow together. Knowledge and logic grow together. Wisdom and love grow together.

A famous zoology professor at the Sorbonne had the habit of giving his students an oral exam at the end of his course, and he always asked the same question: "Tell me all you know about worms."

Of course his students would goof around all semester and then just before the exam study assiduously all about worms. And they all got very high marks.

Finally the professor became concerned that all his students were doing so well. The time came to give the exam and meanwhile all the students were studying all about worms. When the first student came for the exam, the professor asked, "Tell me all you know about elephants:'

The student was profoundly flustered for a moment, then he answered, "Elephants have worm-like tails. Worms are classified... " And then he started.

Knowledge is always unintelligent. If a question is asked for which you have a ready-made answer it is good, if a question is asked for which you don't have a ready-made answer you are in trouble. You are just behaving mechanically. Knowledge is mechanical, and how can anything mechanical help you to be wise? Knowledge is nothing but categorization.

Once upon a time there was a handsome young lion. He was captured in the African jungle and brought to America, where he was put on display in a zoo. This made the lion very unhappy because he preferred the freedom of his wild native land and the companionship of other jungle beasts. But after a time he became resigned to his fate and made up his mind that if he had to live behind bars he would be the best zoo lion around.

In an adjoining cage there was another lion, an old and lazy one with a negative responsibility and no signs of ambition or capability of any kind. He lay all day in the sun, aroused no interest from visitors. In sharp contrast, the young lion paced for hours back and forth in his cage. He acted the true King of Beasts, rolling his maned head, snarling, and baring his teeth. The crowds loved him; they paid no attention to the indolent old lion asleep in the next cage.

The young lion appreciated the attention he was getting, but he was annoyed by his failure to win adequate reward. Each afternoon the zoo keeper came through the cages to feed the animals. The lazy old lion who made no effort to please the spectators was given a big bowl of horsemeat. The young lion, now a star attraction, was given a bowl of chopped-up oranges, bananas and nuts. This made him very unhappy.

"Perhaps," he mused, "I am not trying hard enough. I will improve the act." So he strutted longer and more spectacularly. To the snarls and gnashing of teeth he added frequent roars that shook the bars of his cage. The crowds got bigger. Thousands of citizens came to see his performance, and he was pictured on page one in the local newspaper.

But the diet did not change. Still the lazy lion got the red meat and the young lion stayed on a vegetarian diet. Finally he could endure it no longer. He stopped the keeper with a challenge. "I am getting sick and tired of this," he complained. "Each day you give that no-good lazy type next door a big bowl of red meat and you feed me oranges, bananas and nuts. It is grossly unfair. Why do you think all these people come to the zoo? They come to see me! I am the star attraction, the lion that is doing all the work and the one that gets the results. Why am I not entitled to meat for dinner?"

The keeper replied, "Young man, you don't know how lucky you are. The Table of Organization in this zoo calls for one lion. You are being carried as a monkey!"

The philosophers are good at categorizing things, the scientists are good at categorizing things. Their whole effort is how to categorize, how to put everything in a particular category -- this is this, that is that -- and they go on and on. They are not in search of the organic unity of life, they are not in search of the ultimate principle of life that runs in the trees and the mountains and the stars and the animals and the birds and men and women. They are not in search of that unifying factor. That unifying factor is what religions have called the truth, what Buddha has called NIRVANA, what Jesus has called the kingdom of God.

You will not find, Wolfgang, any wisdom, any love in philosophy. Yes, you will find all kinds of beautiful answers, you will find all kinds of parrot-like information, facts, you will become very efficient in repeating them, in quoting them, but you will only be becoming a computer. That can be done better by a computer than by you.

Find out something within you which a computer cannot do and you will have found the right direction for your innermost being, for your freedom. That is the whole effort of Zen, that's what we are trying to do here. The computer cannot love; it can say "I love you," but you know that it is a computer. It can make all the gestures of love, but if suddenly the electricity goes... "Grrr, grrr, grrr," or if the battery runs out, first you have to replace the battery, then it will say "I love you."

But people are foolish and people are trying all kinds of things to make man more like a robot.

Just the other day I was reading this item in a newspaper: "Mundane Mating," Toronto, 25 February:

Men and women in future will have robot sexual partners, and erotic technology will offer them their hearts' desires: stimulants, aphrodisiacs, and chemical orgasms.

Sexologists concluded during a seminar here that men and women will still mate, but during well-defined periods. Some said that women will want the "profound and basic experience" of pregnancy without giving birth.

One sexologist said that sexual relations with robots will help to "supplement or enrich fantasy life and contribute to the establishment of a milieu which fosters rather than arrests sexual growth and development."

It is going to happen! In a way it has already happened. For thousands of years man has been making love mechanically, and the so-called mahatmas -- Mahatma Gandhi and the Polack Pope and Mother Teresa -- they all say that if you make love only for one reason, that is reproduction, then it is not sin. If you make love just for the sheer joy of it, for the sheer fun of it, it is sin.

Now, reproduction is chemical, biological; fun is a higher value. No animal knows anything about fun. Have you seen animals making love? Do you see any fun? They don't even say, "Hello!" to each other, and when they are finished they don't even say, "Thank you, see you soon!" They don't even look at each other; they seem to be utterly bored. Look at animals making love -- they seem to be utterly bored, as if some biological force is forcing them to do something and they have to do it. Once they are finished they go on their ways; they will never recognize each other again, they will not write love letters.

Fun is not animal, fun is human. And all these mahatmas go on condemning man for everything animal except reproduction -- and reproduction is absolutely animal! All animals reproduce; there is nothing special in it. The only thing is -- they don't enjoy it, they don't have any fun in it, they don't have any loving relationship growing out of it, they don't transform the sexual energy. But reproduction is thought to be a virtue and fun is thought to be something absolutely condemnable. These people have always changed human joy into a robot-like phenomenon.

People have been making love to each other in the darkness, under blanket covers. If a Martian comes to the earth, particularly to India, he will not see any sign of anybody making love. He will be very puzzled how these people reproduce. His basic inquiry here will be to find out how you reproduce, because he will not see anybody making love. Love is far away, he will not see any people holding hands.

I have heard:

Once a couple reached Mars, and of course their basic inquiry was... because they could not find out how people made love there. They tried hard, they did all kinds of things that they had done on Earth to know about other people's love affairs -- they became peeping toms -- but they could not find out anything.

Finally they asked a Martian couple, very politely, "We have come from Earth, we are on a research tour. We want to know how you make love."

They said, "It is very simple!" They opened their fridge, brought out two jars, started mixing the chemicals contained in the jars into a third small jar, mixed them well and put the jar back into the fridge.

The couple inquiring about love-making could not see any love-making in it. They said, "What are you doing? Are you preparing coffee or something?" They said, "No, because in nine months this new jar will have a child in it. We have mixed all the ingredients needed.

This is how we reproduce."

The couple from Earth started laughing. They said, "Then tell us one thing more -- how do you prepare coffee?"

Then they both undressed and started making love! And the couple from Earth went into hysterical laughter; they could not believe what was happening. They were making coffee!

The Martians asked, "What are you laughing at? Why are you laughing?"

They said, "Because this is the way we reproduce -- and you are making coffee! So this is the coffee which you served us this morning!"

Man has been trying to find some scientific way to reproduce so that everything can become mechanical. Then even love will no longer be private. Wisdom has already been taken over by the churches, the universities; love is still a little bit private. Of course, the society has dominated almost ninety-nine percent of it through marriage, through all kinds of laws, through all kinds of legal bindings, but still one-percent remains private. That too the society is not very happy about; that has also to be encroached upon -- your love has also to be taken away from you. Wisdom was taken away long ago, now love has to be taken away. Then you are reduced to a machine, a servile machine, a slave; then you will only repeat clich?s.

A man rings at the chaplain's door. When the housekeeper opens the door, the man says, "I am bringing you the twenty-four thousand liters of oil you ordered" The housekeeper is very surprised and asks the chaplain if he ordered all those liters of oil.

The chaplain is even more surprised, but suddenly he remembers his parrot. So he storms into the room and shouts, "Did you order twenty-four thousand liters of oil?"

"No," says the parrot.

"Are you sure? Quite sure?" asks the chaplain.

"Yes!" shrills the parrot.

"Well, just wait!" replies the chaplain. "If I find out that you have been lying, I'll nail you by your two wings to the wall!"

Sure enough, he soon discovers that it is the parrot that placed the order, so he nails it to the wall.

After the parrot has been hanging there for a while, he sadly looks out of the window and sees the crucifix in front of the church. He lifts his head and says, "Well, Jesus, did you order twenty-four thousand liters of oil too?"

Man has been reduced to a parrot. My sannyasins have to come out of all these cages -- the cages that philosophy, theology, science and all other kinds of things have created around you.

You have to come out of it all, IN toto -- not partially, not gradually, not slowly, not tomorrow but now, at this very moment.

"Riko!"

"Yes, Master," said the official with a start.

"See," said Nansen, "the goose is out!"