Roots in the universe

Anando, before we discuss Manzan and his statements - a few necessary things.

One is the word 'mind'...

In Sanskrit, there are two words: one is man from which the English words 'mind' and 'man' both have been derived; another is chit, which can be approximately translated as consciousness, awareness, watchfulness.

The translating of these words has taken such a long journey. With Gautam Buddha already it was not Sanskrit; it was a small branch of Sanskrit, Pali. The words have already begun to waver and to take new shapes and forms.

Then when they reached China, they took even more unrecognizable forms, and after China, they reached Japan. They have gone so far away from their origin that to translate them from Japanese into English is really a gymnastics!

This translator has used a certain method: wherever man, the ordinary mind, is concerned, he uses a small M. And wherever chit, the universal consciousness, is concerned, he uses mind with a capital M.

In writing, it is perfectly good; in reading, it becomes more difficult. Whether the M is a capital or a small M, in both cases you are going to call it "mind."

So remember, all the time he is using mind... I will remind you when it is a capital M and when it is a small M. You have the small-M mind, a dewdrop of the universal Mind. When this dewdrop disappears in the ocean, it becomes a capital-M Mind. It is no longer yours, it is nobody. It is simply the universal, existential, awareness. It does not belong to anybody, it is nobody's possession.

Secondly, it has always been a difficult process for an enlightened man to bring his experience into language. Everybody falters. It is not the person's fault; the very process is one of trying to do the impossible. The experience of the universal consciousness is so far away from language that when you drag it down to language, it becomes something else. Then it can have many interpretations.

Your experience was one, absolutely singular, absolutely clear. There was no question of any alternative meaning or any interference. But when you bring it down to the level of language, then thousands of problems arise.

You have to remember the difficulty of the enlightened man, and you have to be compassionate, because our language is so poor that it cannot contain things of the beyond.

For example, Krishna's SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA has one thousand interpretations. Now, either Krishna was so mad that he would speak words with one thousand meanings... A word with one thousand meanings means nothing! And those meanings are contradictory to each other. But in bringing them to language, they become vulnerable. There are one thousand great commentaries on Krishna's GITA, and they all condemn each other. They all project their own mind - and they are free, because Krishna is not there to interrupt, to say, "This is not my meaning."

A word can have many meanings. Particularly older languages - Sanskrit, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic - have a beauty but also a difficulty. Their beauty is that they are very poetic. Poetry needs as much freedom to use words as possible. Even to use the same word in different meanings gives the poet a great freedom.

But you cannot write science in the same way as you write poetry. It has to represent exactly the one thing that you are trying to pinpoint. You cannot write a treatise on science in Sanskrit; it is impossible, because immediately there will be commentators and there will be differences, and it will simply create confusion.

Science is very much prose. But the inner world of man is just the opposite; it is very much poetry.

So it was very good that these ancient languages were capable of having one word with many meanings, and many words with one meaning. They could manage to convey something which is not possible to convey in prose.

Many times I will have to remind you where the translator has misunderstood Manzan.

Manzan is an enlightened master. What he is saying is absolutely true, but the way he has been translated... and I cannot blame the translator either. Manzan is speaking from high on top of the mountains, snow-peaked, and the translator is translating in the dark valleys of the unconscious mind. It is almost like a conversation between a sleeping man and a waking man. The waking man says something and the sleeping man, if he hears at all, hears something else. Most probably he does not hear; he goes on weaving his own dreams.

A conversation between the sleeping and the awake is the same as the conversation of the masters with the seekers. If the seeker is just a student who has come to acquire knowledge, he will catch hold of the words but he will forget that those words are empty. Just surrounding the word somewhere was the hint; the word was not the real thing. The word was used just as a vehicle, but it was carrying something invisible.

Only a disciple can understand the invisible because he is not interested in acquiring knowledge, so he does not pay much attention to the word. He gives much more opening to the wordless transmission. It is a very difficult task, but if you are alert and open, it is possible to understand even a man who has gone beyond language.

Manzan has certainly gone beyond language. He says:

THE ULTIMATE WAY IS THE ONE REAL GREAT WAY.

To truth there cannot be many ways. To truth there is only one ultimate way. Reduced to its simplicity, it is dis-identifying yourself from the body and the mind and just being a witness, without any judgment, without any appreciation, without any activity on your part - just a reflecting mirror.

This is the ultimate way and this is the only real way. There are a thousand other ways proposed, but they don't lead to truth, they lead to different places....

For example, if somebody is reciting the name of Buddha... Buddha never became a buddha by reciting his name. He followed the ultimate way - and that too in a strange situation because he had no master. He stumbled and groped for six years continuously, from door to door, from master to master, but nobody satisfied his thirst. They talked about great things but he could see that those great things had not happened to them. They were just like parrots, repeating. They were learned scholars but not experienced wise people.

After six years of strenuous search, one fullmoon night he sat under a tree near Bodhgaya. And he was so tired of this whole search - and this has been missed by the scholars completely, that he was so tired of the whole search, so fed up that he thought, "I have renounced the world - now let me renounce this search too. I'm so utterly tired, I don't want to do anything."

That night he slept for the first time in six years without any tensions, without any anxieties, utterly relaxed. And when he opened his eyes, the last star in the morning was just disappearing.

Seeing that star disappearing, desiring nothing, wanting nothing - not even truth, not even enlightenment - suddenly he became a mirror. In the mirror, as the star disappeared in the sky...

from his mirror everything disappeared. He became enlightened not because he was longing for it, he became enlightened at a moment when he had dropped all longing. Every longing is the longing of the mind, and mind is the only barrier.

So what is the ultimate way, the Great Way? To get detached from the mind and the body structure.

These are your imprisonments. And as you become detached, away and away, beyond and beyond, suddenly you see that you consist only of pure consciousness. Your consciousness was imprisoned in a certain body form, in a certain mind. And you have been imprisoned for centuries, for many, many births. Just a small glimpse of the beyond and the heart throbs with a new joy. A dance descends on you. Life becomes just a ceremony, a moment-to-moment festival, because now you are no longer a prisoner or a slave. You are freedom itself.

Manzan is saying: THE ULTIMATE WAY IS THE ONE REAL GREAT WAY. There are many ways propounded... and they will lead to some place. If you go on chanting a mantra, you may feel a certain peace, a certain health, a certain well-being, but this is not enlightenment. You may worship a god with as much belief as possible... because total belief is impossible; doubt is always hidden behind it. If there is no doubt there is no need of any belief. Belief is simply covering the doubt. So you go on worshipping - obviously, with great belief - but you know that by the corner of your eye there is a little doubt about whether this god exists or not. You may not say it to anyone - you may not say even to yourself, but you know it; the doubt is there.

But if you go on worshipping a god, you may start having visions of the god, which are hallucinatory, which are just like dreams. It is such an easy process. Just go to a mountain cave for three weeks on a fast - fasting helps very much. That's why all the religions have accepted fasting as a great religious phenomenon.

What fasting does is to take away all the activity of your digestion; your energy that is involved in digestion is freed. And then concentrate on one god: Rama or Krishna or Christ. Now the whole energy is available. You may have felt in your ordinary life that if your stomach is empty, you cannot sleep. What is the problem? The energy that is involved in the stomach goes into the head and it keeps you awake. A good meal and you immediately start snoring, because all the energy is pulled down to the stomach. The mind no longer has its quota to think, to dream, to hallucinate; it will have to wait for some time.

There is much dream research going on around the world. Many psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, are looking into dreams and are surprised that only the first two hours, when you go to sleep, are mostly dreamless. After those two hours, dreams start.

In eight hours' sleep, six hours you dream and only two hours you sleep. But those two hours are the early hours. Once your food has been digested and energy is released, the mind starts functioning.

It is the same energy. The mind starts functioning, creating dreams. Unfulfilled desires, repressed inhibitions, all start bubbling up.

If you go to a cave in the mountains for a three-week fast, exactly on the fourth or fifth day your appetite will disappear. And once your appetite disappears, you have lost your connection with the earth. Now you are just a mind, and your whole energy is available to the mind. And if you are concentrating on some god, you will start seeing that god. Nearabout the fourteenth or fifteenth day, you will have the first encounter with your god.

By the time your three weeks are over, you will start even talking and receiving answers from your god - and you are doing both the things! And it is not that you are asleep - fully awake, open eyes.

You can go into any madhouse and you can see people talking to somebody; you don't see to whom they are talking. They are not only speaking, they are also answering. And the strangest thing is that when a madman asks a question, he has a different tone, a different voice. When he answers, he has another tone. Obviously! It is somebody else who is answering him. If you cannot see anybody, that is your problem.

The people who have declared their realization of God are great hallucinators. Their way is not the way to truth. Their way is the way which makes the untrue, the illusory, appear as if it is true. It is the way of "as if."

But it is simpler, it is in your hands. You can create any god. You can talk, you can receive the answer to your prayers, and you can be immensely satisfied. But you will not be transformed. Back home, you will be the same man, perhaps a little more egoistic. And the pious egoism is more poisonous than any other. You have realized God; everybody else is inferior to you, just ordinary mortals who don't know anything about the immortality that comes by encountering God and that only God can confer on you.

Zen has nothing to do with any god. No sincere man, no intelligent man has anything to do with any fiction. He searches within. He looks within - because he is life, so there must be some center within himself from where the life arises.

And that center cannot be separate from the universal life - from where will it go on being fueled?

Once you have found your center of life, you have also found, on the other side, that this is the way to universal life. From here you have roots into the universe.

You are not without roots. All your nourishment is coming from a source hidden within you.

Zen is the search for this life energy. You can give it any name. This translator has called it the "Mind of faith." Most probably he is a Christian, because many Christian missionaries have translated ancient scriptures of the East. Because of that, the Christian language and the Christian way of expressing things has entered into non-Christian scriptures - not intentionally, very unconsciously.

I am reminded that one Christian missionary went to Rinzai, the great Zen master from China who introduced Zen to Japan....

The missionary was absolutely certain that if he read the Sermon on the Mount, he would be able to convert this fellow Rinzai. And he seemed to be very influential; if he were converted, all his followers would be converted.

He asked Rinzai's permission: "I want to read something from my scripture, and I want to know your opinion." He started reading the Sermon on the Mount, and after just maybe two paragraphs, Rinzai stopped him. And he told him, "Whoever wrote these lines is a bodhisattva. One day he will become a buddha."

The missionary was very much shocked....

Everybody is a bodhisattva. Bodhisattva means, in essence you are a buddha - just a recognition, a remembrance, and you have never been anything else.

The Sermon on the Mount is a beautiful piece of literature, but Rinzai stopped the missionary and said, "Don't waste time. Whoever has written these lines is certainly a bodhisattva of great merit.

One day he will become a buddha."

The Christians translated the Eastern and Far Eastern scriptures in order to show the Christians, "Look, these primitive people think they are religious!" But the whole thing backfired. It took a little time, but as people started looking deeply into the Eastern scriptures, they found their Bibles and their Korans to be very ordinary, very mundane.

It is because of this translator's Christian mind, which is attuned to faith... Zen does not need any faith. "Faith" certainly means you don't know and yet you believe. Zen is against any faith. It is for inquiry, not for faith - intense inquiry.

Zen comes closer to science than any other religion for the simple reason that it does not require any faith. It requires of you only an intense inquiry into yourself, a deepening of consciousness, not concentration - a settling, a relaxing of consciousness, so that you can find your own source. That very source is the source of the whole existence.

THE MIND OF FAITH IS THE NON-DUALISTIC, INCONCEIVABLE MIND... Now please change "Mind of faith" into "consciousness." Consciousness is non-dualistic, and because it is non-dualistic it is inconceivable, inconceivable to the mind.

Mind can conceive only the dual - day and night as separate. Mind cannot conceive that day is just another form of night; light is a little less dark and darkness is a little less light. The distinction between them is not of duality but only of relativity. They are one. That's why it happens so easily that night changes into day, day changes into night. If there were any duality, then at any time, night might have said, "I don't want to go," or the sun might have said, "Enough! Today I'm going fishing."

But they are not separate. They are just two phases of one energy.

In the same way, life and death are two phases of the same energy. Death is not the end of life.

Death itself is part of life, and life goes on. You have died many times, and still you are alive. Your life is eternal. Death is a small episode here and there, when you change your house, but the essential of your being remains the same. How many times you change houses does not matter, but it is inconceivable to the mind.

Again, I would like you to read instead of 'mind', consciousness:

CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE WAY DO NOT DECREASE WHEN IN ILLUSION.

They are simply forgotten, not decreased. They are covered with clouds but not decreased.

When the moon is covered with clouds, it is not decreased - it is exactly the same whether the clouds cover it or go on their way somewhere else. Clouds or no clouds, the moon remains in its perfect beauty without any increase or decrease.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE WAY DO NOT DECREASE WHEN IN ILLUSION, so when you are not a buddha, don't think that you are something less than a buddha. You may know, you may not know, but your buddhahood is exactly the same. If you don't know, your buddha is covered with clouds.

The mind is nothing but a cloud. The identity with the body is nothing but a cloud. And you are lost in the clouds and forget yourself. To forget oneself is very easy, the easiest thing in the world.

Because you know, whether you forget or not, it is there. You don't forget anything else, but you can forget - you have forgotten; you have no idea who you are. But whether you forget or remember, these are only clouds or no-clouds, but the moon is in its full glory, shining in its full beauty. Your buddhahood never increases, never decreases.

Because awareness is non-judgmental, just like the mirror. It only reflects, it does not say, "You are really a great beauty!" It does not say, "You are really very homely - just get out of the way; it hurts to see you. From where have you got this face?"

The mirror simply reflects without in any way judging, appreciating, saying anything about what is reflected in it. And once the thing is gone, the mirror is empty again.

Zen has been described by the great masters as the empty mirror.

The mirror does not cling to something because something beautiful is passing by. It does not catch hold of the sari..."Where are you going, sweetheart? Let us go for dinner."

I have told you yesterday about the great TV potato movement. On the way back, Anando told me that the news has just come that now in New York, great hotels are giving special service to TV potatoes. Because they cannot leave their chairs, they just have to phone the hotel and the hotel prepares whatever they need and brings it to their chair, where they eat and continue to look at the television. But they have to be members.

That movement is going to spread all over America and Europe and maybe Japan. It is really a non-political, non-religious, very special movement - nothing like it has ever happened before. And people are wearing badges saying that they belong to the Couch Potato Movement. It is a great respectability; not everybody can afford it. Seven and a half hours per day of watching television is a basic requirement. Only idiots can do it.

I call television the "idiot box." Television goes on supplying all kinds of nonsense; television is becoming a great problem. It could have been a great solution; it could have been a great instrument in educating people. But on the contrary, it is destroying people. Nobody reads, and if nobody reads you can't think that there will be born again a Leo Tolstoy or Fyodor Dostoevsky or Anton Chekhov.

You cannot conceive of there being great poets, great philosophers; nobody is ready to read.

People are just glued to their television set, which is almost seventy-five percent advertisements and twenty-five percent entertainment. It is going to destroy people's intelligence... because you don't have to think anything, you don't have to answer anything, you just relax there. Television can be a great calamity, as it is going.

It can be used in a very great way - to educate people for peace, for love, to educate people for music, for dance. Thousands of dimensions are possible that television can make available. You need not travel around the world, you can just sit in your chair and the television can bring the whole world moving before you - the Taj Mahal, and Ajanta and Ellora, and Bodhgaya and Khajuraho in all their detail, with all kinds of information. It can become a living experience, because reading is one thing; seeing is another.

When you are reading, you are reading just dead words. When you are seeing, the Taj Mahal becomes alive in front of you. You don't have to move, the Taj Mahal will move and show its beauty from all sides, at different times of night... you can know more about the Taj Mahal sitting in your chair than a man can know wasting years of time, because the Taj Mahal changes its beauty on different nights.

On the night of the full moon, nearabout nine o'clock, the Taj Mahal has such a dreamlike quality that you have a tremendous urge to touch it and feel whether it is real or you are imagining it. In the daytime, the same Taj Mahal looks ordinary - nothing special.

But television is bringing people to a primitive state. Nobody is reading great novels; nobody has time. I have come across people who have not heard even the name of Tolstoy, because it is not on television. They have not heard the name of Dostoevsky. They don't have any idea what a great novel or a great poem is. They are fed with junk and they collect that junk.

And the problem is that these people will never think of meditation, because you cannot see the television with closed eyes. You can eat your food... People are making love looking at television!

What kind of love must these people be making? One is really surprised at the ingenuity of human beings.

The television is on from morning until midnight. Television has become the whole world. All that you know is television. And all the great art, poetry, novels, dramas - they have completely disappeared.

Who cares for books?

In America, people purchase only paperbacks, because they are cheap and you can look here and there and leave them in the airplane. Nobody wants to purchase a hardbound book because it is heavy to carry and it is costly to throw away. Book lovers have disappeared, and with them, great books with aesthetic value are completely gone.

People are falling into a primitive state. Certainly, these people become very gullible. Constantly, these are the faithful people, faithful Christians. Whatever the television goes on saying..."This is the best chewing gum" - you start chewing that gum because if television is saying it, it can't be wrong. And not one television - every television, from all directions the same advertisement, the same chewing gum. And the same beautiful woman is saying to you, "How great is this chewing gum. You have to purchase it!"

And if you are a member of the Couch Potato Club you just phone the store, give your number, and the chewing gum will be supplied to you! Now television is ruling people's minds.

Meditation has become almost non-existential. You don't have time to meditate, because meditation means sitting silently without doing anything and the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

Sitting silently for a few moments is impossible. The television - you cannot miss this football match!

And people become so much involved and identified that they shout, they jump up and down in front of their television sets because their side is winning and they have to give moral support.

I have seen a person throw his television set on the floor because his side has lost the football game!

I asked him, "What are you doing? This is not the fault of the television set."

He said, "I'm feeling so angry, I could do anything."

So much identification... And meditation is just the opposite - no identification. You simply sit with closed eyes and you have a natural, biological television screen in your mind. And it brings great things to you! You just watch and you will see Sophia Loren... but don't judge. Don't even say hello.

She will come and go, you just wait. Just be patient. Don't ask her to join you for dinner at the Blue Diamond.

Identification, or justification, or judgment, are all against meditation. You simply see. Whatever comes before your eyes, just see it as a cloud passing by. And everything passes by and if you can be patient enough, soon the screen is empty. When the screen is empty, you have gone beyond the mind. You have entered the world of Zen.

What Manzan is saying is: You are a buddha. You will remain a buddha whether you recognize the fact or not. But if you do not practice... and by "practice" is not meant what you understand. "If you do not practice" means if you do not make a small effort to continuously remember who you are, you will remain a buddha but it will not be a manifestation.

What is the point, if you have a lamp in your house and you have covered it with a blanket? It cannot manifest its light. Our forgetfulness is a blanket over ourselves. It does not allow our buddha to radiate. It does not allow our buddha to be seen and experienced by others.

If you do not realize it, you cannot attain it. Realization and attainment are simply the same. In fact, that is the problem I have told you about in the beginning. Neither realization is needed nor attainment is needed. What is needed is a deep silence in which you can find exactly what is your source of life.

Attainment is about objects - somebody attains to the Everest, somebody attains a Nobel Prize, somebody attains to being the greatest rich man in the world.... Attainments are outside you. They take you away from yourself.

Your self, your very being, is already there - it has not to be attained. Neither does it have to be realized.

Do you understand the meaning of realization? - to make something real which was not there.

For example, a painter makes a painting. He realizes something. It was in his dreams; he projects the dream and "realizes" a painting.

But your buddha is not your dream. Your buddha can neither be realized nor attained; it can only be remembered.

The person who has translated this sutra must be thinking in Christian ways. There is no other way in Christianity - you have to "attain." You have to have the heart of faith; you have to reach God through Jesus, a direct approach is not allowed. Jesus has to recognize you, that you are an authentic believer, and he will pray to God to let you in. The missionaries were accustomed to their own language.

Zen is not in any way similar to any other religion. Its uniqueness is inconceivable. How has it become so unique? All religions are repetitive of each other: they may have different gods but they have gods; they may talk in different languages but what they say can be compared.

Now there exists in the universities of the world a new subject, "Comparative Religion." Zen cannot be included in that subject. It is not comparable to anything, it is just itself. It has a very unique way: no achievement, no attainment, because you are it. So just a very simple thing is needed, a remembrance.

I have told you an ancient story....

A lioness gave birth to a child while she was jumping from one hillock to another hillock. Between these two hillocks was passing a great crowd of sheep. The child fell in the crowd of sheep, and it grew up with the sheep. It became a lion, which was a little strange, but it was accepted by the crowd. It had never misbehaved.

It was a strange phenomenon, but he remained a grass-chewing sheep, very nonviolent, and as much afraid of wild animals as other sheep. And he was so friendly that the sheep never bothered about his shape, his height, his length. He was a full-fledged lion.

One day, an accident happened. An old lion saw this procession of sheep and amongst them, in the middle, a great lion. He could not believe his old eyes. He has seen much, an experienced old man.... He said, "My God, what has happened to this lion?" So he rushed into the crowd of sheep - the crowd ran away and the lion also ran away, but the old lion got hold of him. He shrieked and he said, "I want to go with my people, so don't harass me!"

The old man said, "Be quiet! I'm not harassing you. Just come with me."

Nearby there was a small lake, a silent pool of water. The old lion took away the young one very reluctantly, but he had to go. He knew that old lion could be dangerous. He had accepted himself as a sheep, obviously, and not to follow the order of the lion could be a question of life and death.

He took the young lion by the side of the lake and told him, "Look into the lake and see my face and your face." Trembling, he looked; he had to look. But as he looked into the mirror of the lake, immediately a great metamorphosis....

He roared like a lion - he had never roared before. The old lion said, "My work is done. You had forgotten yourself; now you have remembered."

All the buddhas are nothing but old lions, forcing you to see your original face just so that you can remember: you are not what you think you are; you are something vast, something great, something universal, something eternal.

There is no need of any realization, of any attainment. But certainly one has to remember.

Meditation is only an effort to remember.

It does not give you anything; it does not take anything away from you. It simply makes you aware of being a lion... and suddenly, a lion's roar.

One of Gautam Buddha's sermons is called The Lion's Roar.

SEEM DIFFERENT, REALLY THEY COME FROM THE SAME SOURCE...

the same universal consciousness.

The marketplace and the temple are not two separate things. The mind in turmoil and the mind in peace are not two things. A lake disturbed by the wind filled with waves and a lake silent without any waves is the same lake.

To be a buddha or not to be a buddha are only two aspects of one consciousness.

It is your decision to remain outside yourself or to go in, once in a while at least. Because if even once you go in, you will be a different person - even on the outside. The taste of the inner, the fragrance of the inner will start coming through you - through your gestures, through your eyes, through your words, through your silences. Everything will show that you have found something that others are missing.

This last statement is what meditation is - liberating yourself from body and mind. And that is not a struggle. It is simply not being identified. Just remaining silent and aware, soon you are liberated.

You see your body from the inside for the first time, the skeleton and the flesh and the skin bag. For the first time you see your body from within and you see your mind just full of rubbish, all kinds of thoughts, all borrowed. And you are beyond both.

This beyondness, this watcher on the hills, is the recognition of your buddhahood.

A Zen haiku:

We are surrounded with many clouds, much rain.

Remembering yourself... not to get lost.

"Ladling out clear water from the depths of fire." It is as impossible a thing as ladling out pure water from fire. But howsoever impossible it may be, it happens. This is the mystery of existence.

Here, fire turns into water. Here, the dance of rain declares the sun. There is no opposition in existence, no contradiction. Everything supports everything else.

Another haiku:

What shall we call the mind? That is a constant question. It is just soap bubbles - or wind blowing through the pine trees. It is not substantial.

Your thoughts are not even ricepaper thick.

They are just signatures on water.

But they dominate your life.

You allow them to dominate your life.

It is ultimately your responsibility. You can stop this very moment and get out of the slavery - nobody is forcing you to be a slave of your mind.

You can just move any moment you decide.

There is no need to delay or to postpone.

Question 1:

Anando has asked:

Certainly, Anando. He made it as a master.

I have told you the translation is by a Christian missionary. To them, faith is the great thing.

To a Zen master, faith is the barrier. You have to be clean of all faith and all belief. You have to be just silent, searching, your eyes having no dust in them. All faith and belief is nothing but dust.

Anando, there are many things that you can use to recognize the difference.

The teacher will be always speaking in quotes. He will be quoting the scriptures. His words will not carry any authority; his words will not be coming from his very being.

His presence will be different. The teacher's presence has no aura to it. The master's presence has a certain energy field. Those who are receptive, sensitive, can almost touch it; it is tangible.

It is a question of being open, and immediately you can recognize who is only a teacher and who is a master. The difference is very great, but very subtle. And all depends on your receptivity. All depends on your open heart. Only your heart can say whether you are confronted by a master or just listening to a teacher.

With a teacher you don't have a love affair.

With the master you have a great love affair.

With the teacher, you may be convinced by his arguments. With the master, the arguments don't matter but his presence, which quenches your thirst. Just being close to a master, you start feeling a new, fresh breeze. The teacher is stale, carrying old, rotten scriptures. He does not have a fresh experience of the truth.

Traditionally, seekers would go from one master to another master just to find a place where they could feel a kind of rapport, where they could feel with the master a certain oneness. Then they stop. They have found the master.

But one has to be very intelligent, very receptive, very sensitive, because the energy of the master is the most subtle energy possible.

If you are open, and you are thrilled and your heart dances and you want to sing, you have found the man.

This is called, in Zen, the Great Love Affair.

There are ordinary love affairs, which are biological. You cannot even explain those, why you find a certain man or a certain woman and suddenly you feel you have fallen in love. You know it.

Something has clicked in you, but you cannot give any explanation. All your explanations will look absurd, idiotic. Just try. When you have fallen in love with a woman or a man, just try to explain to somebody who knows nothing of love - "Just look at her hair..."

He will say, "What nonsense! You have fallen in love with hairs?"

"Just look at her nose, just look at her eyes..." And whoever you are giving the explanation to will think you are a little cuckoo!

A person falls in love not with noses and eyes and hair but with a total being.

Zen is a great love affair. It is not biological. Hence, it becomes even more difficult but it goes very deep.

The biological affair can change - has to change. It is a temporary phenomenon. The same woman for whom you could have died, now you want to kill.

I have heard about a psychologist who was taking a round of the madhouse and the superintendent was explaining to him whatever he wanted to know about. In a small room, a young man holding a picture to his heart was weeping and weeping.

The man asked, "What has happened to him?"

The superintendent said, "It is a tragedy. He is a very intelligent man, but he has fallen in love with a woman. He is holding the picture of the woman - waking or asleep he does not leave the picture.

But the woman married somebody else; that has driven him mad."

The professor said, "It is really a sad story."

In the next room a man was hitting his head on the wall. He said, "My God! What is he doing?"

The superintendent said, "He married that same woman! Now he wants to kill himself, so he has been put in the madhouse."

At the biological level things are continuously changing. It is very natural that they should change.

At the spiritual level, where being is never changing... if you have found the master, then there is no way to go anywhere. But if you have not found, then it is better not to waste your time.

And it is a question of your inner thrill, inner click. You can call it intuition. I don't want to call it intuition because that makes it more mathematical. It is not that mathematical.

I can call it a click. Something simply happened to you. You cannot explain, nor is there any need to explain. Just being with the master you will see the transformation happening. Whether your click was right or wrong, time will prove.

If no transformation happens to you, that means either you are with a teacher who pretends to be a master or you may be with a master, but you are not open; you don't want to change. No master forces change on you. He creates all the situations in which the change, if you are ready, will be spontaneously happening.

Whatever happens spontaneously is beautiful. Whatever is rehearsed and practiced and disciplined creates hypocrisy. No master will support any hypocrisy.

Before we enter into our inner world, just to remind you that you have to come back... we will be waiting here for you.

You can go as deep as possible, but don't get stuck somewhere, howsoever beautiful and howsoever enchanting.

When Nivedano calls with his drum, come back.

My whole effort is to bring buddhas into the marketplace. I don't want you just to be a buddha and escape. Even Sardar Gurudayal Singh comes back every day. He reaches as deep as possible, but he always thinks, "Who knows what kind of joke is going to be told tomorrow?"

These jokes are keeping him in the world; otherwise, he would have gone long ago.

Paddy and Sean are walking to the Christ is Love Pub, when all of a sudden they hear an explosion.

They run around the corner to see that the pub has been blown up by the IRA.

They are looking through the rubble when Paddy finds a head. He picks it up, holds it in the air and says, "Sean, isn't this Danny O'Riley?"

"No," says Sean, "it can't be. He was not as tall as that!"

Two rats in a laboratory are having a conversation through the bars of their cages.

"Tell me," says the first rat, "how are you getting along with Professor Katzoff?"

"Pretty good," replies the second rat. "It took me a while, but now I have finally got him trained.

Whenever I ring the bell, he brings my dinner!"

Father Finger, the priest, is reputed to have an enormous prick. It is so large, that he has great difficulty in getting any of the local women to sleep with him.

"Sorry, Father," is the reply he always hears. "I wish I could, but your member is just too big for me!"

Feeling desperate, Father Finger goes to Mother O'Mary's whorehouse on the other side of town where he is not recognized. He quickly chooses a girl and she takes him to a room upstairs. Closing the door behind him, Father Finger tells the girl that he is very shy, and would like to undress with the lights off.

"It is okay with me," agrees the girl, and the two of them undress in the dark.

When Father Finger gets into bed, he immediately climbs on top of the girl in the missionary position.

"Do you know, Father," says the girl, "I'm really glad that this is what you came here for. When I saw you coming in, I was sure you were going to talk to me all about... JEEZUS CHRIST!"

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Be silent... close your eyes. Feel the body completely frozen. Look inwards... go as deep as possible.

There is nothing to fear; it is your own space.

Deeper and deeper. When you are deepest in your being, you are at the source of life, and you will also find the roots into the universe.

This is your buddha-nature.

Blessed is this experience of your own being, a buddha. Remember it. Let it become your very breathing and heartbeat... twenty-four hours, day in, day out.

This very remembrance will change everything in your actions, in your gestures; it will bring a grace, a beauty, which is not of this world.

To make it more clear that you are not the body nor the mind, but just a pure awareness...

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

Relax... let go.

The body is there, the mind is there - you are neither, you are just a watcher...

Just a mirror.

This quality of being a mirror is what makes you a buddha. Drink from this universal source as much as you can.

Let it sink into your every fiber and cell.

Nivedano...

(Drumbeat)

You can come back - but come back with your experience, don't leave it behind.

Silently, gracefully, sit down for a few moments, reminding and remembering your inner purity, your inner beauty... your inner innocence.

Okay, Anando?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

Yes!