Osho!

Maneesha, before I enter into the mysteries of Zen, I have received a threat from that old goat, the Shankaracharya of Puri. Rather than answering my question about how burning a living woman can make clouds come over Hyderabad, he has asked the government to arrest me, because I have brought AIDS to India. He is such a genius of stupidity.

This is the only campus in the whole world where everybody has to produce a certificate that he has not got AIDS. How can I bring AIDS to India? Such nonsense should not be tolerated, and I have told him that if he wants a controversy with me, he will have to bring an AIDS-negative certificate with him, otherwise he cannot enter the campus.

He refuses to bring the certificate. Why is he afraid? The fear shows many things. In fact AIDS has been brought into the world by the monks of all the religions who preach celibacy. Celibacy

automatically leads people into perversion. If he is really interested he should get a certificate, not only for himself, but for all the priests of his great temple in Puri. And most of them will be found to be homosexuals, because celibacy is such an unnatural imposition that it is bound to turn your life-energy into some kind of perversion.

Just today one priest in Poona has been found to have AIDS. But just as all the priests are cunning, he entered his blood in somebody else's name, with somebody else's address. But the National Institute of Biology was able to recognize one person and that was a priest. Forty-six other persons are also suffering from AIDS, and that is not the final limit, but all forty-six persons entered their names and addresses wrongly and the Institute is at a loss where to find them.

I am not at all worried about being arrested. On the condition that all the priests and monks of India are tested and can prove that they don't suffer from AIDS, I am willing to remain my whole life in a prison. I say it with absolute certainty, because I know the psychology of homosexuals. AIDS is the ultimate outcome of thousands of years of celibacy being forced on people in the name of religion.

In India there will be more people suffering from AIDS than in any other country, among the priests, monks and Jaina bhikkhus.

If the government has courage enough, I will risk remaining in prison my whole life, but all these people should be checked. This is the only campus, not only in India, but in the whole world, where you cannot enter without a certificate proving that you are AIDS-negative. So in what way is this old idiot saying that I have brought AIDS to India?

Also he goes on insisting that the untouchables need not go to temples because they are God's only beloved people. If the beloved ones cannot enter into a temple, either God is wrong, or his love is a fallacy, a strategy. At least the Shankaracharya who is saying it, who is himself the head of one of the biggest and most ancient temples, with hundreds of priests there, should lead the harijans, the untouchables, into his temple first.

If he is a man of his word, then he should not be so cunning as to say that untouchables need not enter into the temple because God will meet them outside it. It is a strange strategy. Lovers meet in intimacy inside, it is a special concession. But he goes on insisting that harijans should not enter inside temples and he goes on giving an absolutely absurd reason, that it is because they are God's beloved people.

Anyone with even a small intelligence can see the contradiction. If they are God's people, they should be the first to be allowed and welcomed into the temple. And if they alone are God's people, then they, not brahmins, should be the priests and the Shankaracharyas - because the Shankaracharya is not saying that brahmins are God's chosen people, God's beloved people.

This old man is either neurotic or perhaps psychotic. They say that the psychotic is a person who believes that two plus two is five and the neurotic is one who knows that two plus two is four, but is very much worried about it - "Why are they four?"

So he is either neurotic or psychotic - he can choose whatever he is - but he certainly needs psychiatric treatment. I don't ask the government to arrest him, I want the government to hospitalize him.

He is such a hilarious fellow, we would love to welcome him here and enjoy the night, it would be a festival time.

I met him only once, twenty years ago in Patna, at a world Hindu conference. We were both sitting side by side on the platform. Looking at him I was thinking that perhaps Charles Darwin is right.

And he proved it! When I started speaking, I was standing just on the corner of the platform, and he became so enraged, so angry, that he tried to take the microphone away from my hand and fell from the platform. He fell twenty feet from the platform and survived.

He was the president of the conference and he wanted me not to speak at all. I had to tell the one hundred thousand people who had gathered for the conference that if they wanted me to speak, they should raise their hands, so that the Shankaracharya could see whether people wanted to hear me or not. When he saw a hundred thousand hands raised in favor of me, I said to him, "This cancels you as a president. I don't care now about you. The people who are here want to listen to me, and you can go and jump in any well that you want to."

Since then he has been angry - twenty years! If he comes here, it will be a delicious moment for you all. But he has to come with the negative AIDS certificate. And that he cannot bring, because it will be below his dignity even to ask for his blood to be checked, he is such an egoist. But these egoists have been dominating humanity for centuries, and still they go on dominating.

Rather than arresting him, the government has arrested those two hundred harijans who were trying to enter the Nath Dwara temple. The government's act is absolutely unconstitutional. The constitution gives equality to everybody as a birthright. If the government wanted to be legal and constitutional, then the people who were preventing the entry of harijans, like the Shankaracharya and the priests of Nath Dwara, they should be arrested. But what an irony! Those poor two hundred harijans have been arrested to protect the vested interests of the higher, richer Hindu society.

I am simply amazed that harijans go on remaining part of the Hindu society. For ten thousand years at least they have been exploited; they are the most exploited and oppressed part of humanity. They should get out of Hinduism, there is no need of any 'ism'. They don't have to be Hindus. It is so undignified that the Hindu scriptures deny them the right even to read the scriptures; the Hindu scriptures forbid them to worship in the temples; they are even forbidden to touch Hindus. Not even their shadow should touch any Hindu; otherwise the Hindu has to take a bath to cleanse himself.

And still those poor people go on remaining part of Hindu society. It seems to be a certain conspiracy between the Hindu priests and the government, that the priests are out protecting their temples and the harijans, who were trying ... what harm could they have done? Just worshipping in the temple ...

and if a Hindu temple is not allowing a certain section of society, then certainly that section should separate itself from such humiliation.

Hindus will realize the situation only when the harijans separate, because they are one fourth of Hindu society and they serve the ugliest purposes. Once they leave the Hindu fold, then the Hindus will understand who is going to clean their toilets, who is going to kill and murder and butcher animals, and who is going to make shoes, and who is going to clean the streets. All that is ugly has been imposed on harijans.

In fact this gives them great power. Nobody has ever told them that the work they are doing is such that if they stop even for seven days the whole of India will be stinking. And then let the brahmins clean the toilets and the Shankaracharyas clean the streets - just seven days will be enough for Hindus to learn the lesson. Hindus will come to the harijans and ask them, "Please enter our temples; without you our temples are not temples. Purify our temples by entering them, otherwise the whole society will be in such a difficult situation."

Brahmins cannot do such things, nor can other high-class Hindus. Only one man, Gautam Buddha, really denied the caste system. And because of denying the caste system, Buddhism had to disappear from India.

Another person who denied the caste system was Mahavira, but he was more diplomatic than Gautam Buddha. He denied the caste system but continued to use the harijans for the same purposes as other Hindus. That is the reason why Jainism became a small religion, confined only to the business class. They could not be brahmins; brahmins wouldn't allow them. They could not be warriors, the second highest class, and they did not want to be harijans, the fourth class, so only the third class, business people, was possible. Jainism compromised, and because of this I call Jainism a coward's religion; they cannot exist on their own, they have to depend on Hindus. Buddha was absolutely uncompromising. As long as he lived people gathered around him, his personal charisma ... but the moment he was gone people were butchered, murdered, burned, or driven to become sudras. Most of the sudras, the untouchables, come originally from the followers of Buddha.

In Hinduism there is no possibility to enter into any other class. If you want to enter Hinduism, you have to become a sudra. The fourth class only is available, the higher classes are closed for any conversion. I hate to say that Jainism proved a coward's religion, but if you are certainly different from Hindus and you don't believe in the caste system, then you should not use it. You should find your own shoemakers; amongst yourselves you should find the toilet cleaners. Without this, you don't matter; you are a dependent shadow of Hinduism, your revolution is not great enough. It is just in the scriptures that you deny the caste system, but in your life you believe it exactly like Hindus.

Because Buddha did not compromise ... that is one of the reasons for my respect for the man.

Humanity is one, and anyone who wants to create divisions of superiority and inferiority should be put in a psychiatric hospital. He needs good electric shocks to bring him to his senses so that he can see that two plus two is really four.

These sutras are in a way connected with what I was saying just now because the followers of Buddha could not exist in India, they were not allowed to exist. They were either burned or forced to be sudras or thrown out of the country. But in a way it proved a blessing in disguise. Buddhism spread all over Asia, into China, Mongolia, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka - the whole of Asia became Buddhist because the refugees, who had left India out of fear, spread the message of Buddha. But it is a strange, an unbelievable fact, that from India, which goes on claiming itself as the birthplace of Gautam Buddha, Buddhism disappeared completely.

These anecdotes belong to the heights that Buddhism reached, together with Taoism, in China.

Gautam Buddha and Lao Tzu were contemporaries, and both were of the same insight and clarity. They both belong to the universal sense of humanity. So when Buddhist monks reached China, they were welcomed. There was no conflict between Taoism and Buddhism. This is a

strange fact of history, it has never happened anywhere else. Christians have been fighting with Mohammedans, Mohammedans have been fighting with Hindus, Christians have been fighting with Jews - everywhere, all the so-called religions have been conflicting. And it is not only verbal conflict:

they have been killing each other in millions.

The meeting of Buddhism and Taoism is exceptional, unique. The Taoist monks received the refugee Buddhists with great love. And slowly a new phenomenon, a by-product of the meeting of Buddhism and Taoism came to birth: this is Zen. These anecdotes have the quality of Gautam Buddha and Lao Tzu both. Two of the greatest human beings who have lived on this earth, their meeting has produced the most significant and the most fragrant religiousness. But it is a little difficult to understand because Buddha spoke in a totally different language, and Lao Tzu spoke in a totally different language. And at the meeting of the two it became even more complicated. But it is a joy to enter into this complication and to find the diamond hidden behind these words.

KYOGEN WAS ASKED BY A MONK, "WHAT IS THE WAY?"

HE ANSWERED, "A DRAGON SINGING IN A WITHERED TREE."

I have to explain to you - the dragon is a mythological animal, it does not exist. But Kyogen is saying that the way is "A DRAGON SINGING IN A WITHERED TREE." A tree that has withered and a dragon that does not exist - if you can understand this, you have found the way. Just like the dragon, disappear as an ego; and just like a withered tree, drop all your thoughts, as the leaves have fallen from the tree. And you will have found your heart, singing a song. And you will find the way to reach to the very heart of existence.

There is no God in Buddhism or Taoism. All the religions that believe in God are childish. The whole universe is divine, it is only a question of awakening to your divineness. The way does not lead you somewhere else, the way simply leads you into your own heart. The ego is a fiction like the dragon, and your mind, your thoughts, should become a withered tree. Only then can you find your life juice hidden inside you. That is your truth, and finding it, you start singing and dancing with joy because you have found the eternal.

THE MONK SAID, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT." Obviously, the monk was trying to understand the words; he was not able to see that Kyogen had not answered his question but only symbolically indicated towards it. Neither the dragon exists nor is the tree alive.

Kyogen said, "If you cannot understand this, let us try it another way: THE PUPILS OF THE EYES OF A SKULL." Now, skulls don't have pupils. But just be a skeleton, utterly silent, eyes closed. Be as if you are dead and you have found the way - just surging inside you, a tremendous awareness, the very existence. It sings in the cuckoos, it blossoms in the roses, it has flowered in you as human beings; it can flower in you as buddhas.

Hence I address you as my buddhas. Perhaps a few of you may realize like lightning, but a few of you may have a little more sleep.

But tomorrow we will try again. If you have come here, you are caught in a net. Unless you become a buddha, you don't leave this place. Unfortunately, such places have almost disappeared from the world.

AFTERWARDS, ANOTHER MONK ASKED SEKISO, "WHAT IS THIS 'DRAGON SINGING IN A WITHERED TREE'?"

SEKISO SAID, "IT IS BEING INVESTED WITH JOY."

THE MONK THEN ASKED, "WHAT IS THIS 'PUPILS OF A SKULL'?"

SEKISO SAID, "IT IS THE GARMENT OF WISDOM."

These dialogues will look very absurd, but they are not. They have a totally different logic. It is not Aristotelian logic, which divides things, which created the dialectics which culminated in the work of Karl Marx as dialectical materialism.

Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, and the great masters of Buddhism and Taoism don't believe in dialectics, they believe in oneness. There are no two's, there is nothing other than one. That one has expressed itself in millions of forms, but the innermost reality is one.

Sekiso is saying, "IT IS THE GARMENT OF WISDOM."

AGAIN, A MONK ASKED SOZAN WHAT THE DRAGON SINGING IN THE WITHERED TREE MEANT, AND HE ANSWERED, "THE PULSE DOES NOT STOP."

A great answer: THE PULSE DOES NOT STOP. Even though a man is dead, he will be pulsating somewhere else. The pulse does not stop. Here, he may not be breathing, but he may be breathing somewhere else, in some other body, in some other form. Life is an eternity, it is absolutely unacquainted with death. From end to end it pulsates in different forms, creating different songs.

This is the essence of all the awakened ones.

THE PULSE DOES NOT STOP.

TO THE QUESTION ABOUT WHAT THE PUPILS OF THE SKULL SIGNIFIED, HE ANSWERED, "NOT QUITE DRY."

He is saying that the master was very humorous. He answered your stupid question, that is enough.

It shows his compassion. He is not quite dry, otherwise he would have simply refused to answer.

All questions are stupid. If they have been answered, they have been answered because of love and compassion. But because the truth cannot be put into words, one has to go round about. All these answers are simply saying, "Please, don't ask the question in words. Bring your quest, bring your silence and without saying a word you will hear it, because it is within you as it is within me."

The master does not give anything to the disciple. On the contrary, he takes everything from the disciple and leaves him totally alone, in absolute purity, taking away all false ideas, personalities, egos, ideologies, theologies. The master takes away all kinds of nonsense, but he gives nothing.

What you find has always been yours. Because of the false, you could not see it. Once the false is understood as false, the truth asserts itself in its absolute purity and grandeur.

THE MONK ASKED, "IS THERE ANYONE WHO CAN HEAR THE DRAGON SINGING?"

The poor fellow is still clinging to the metaphor.

SOZAN REPLIED, "IN ALL THE WIDE WORLD, THERE IS NOT A SINGLE PERSON WHO DOES NOT HEAR IT."

One has just to be silent. In utter silence, there is nothing but song, a song without sound and a dance without movement.

THE MONK ASKED WHOSE WORDS THEY WERE.

SOZAN SAID, "I DON'T KNOW, BUT WHOEVER HEARS THEM WILL LOSE HIS LIFE."

Unless you lose your life, you cannot have the taste of universal life. Unless you drop all the defenses between you and existence, you will remain a dewdrop, you cannot know what it is to be the ocean.

You remain a dewdrop on the lotus leaf; but just take a jump, and below the lotus leaf is the ocean.

Once you are in the ocean, certainly you will not be yourself, you will become the whole ocean.

Sozan composed a verse:

THE DRAGON IN THE WITHERED TREE REALLY SEES THE WAY.

THE EYES OF THE SKULL ABOVE ALL BECOME CLEAR.

KNOWLEDGE REACHES ITS LIMIT, AND THERE IS NOTHING TO SAY.

WHO CAN DISTINGUISH THE PURE AMIDST THE IMPURE?

To the person of realization, there is nothing pure and nothing impure; there is only the real and the shadow of the real to which he has been clinging up to now.

ONE DAY A MONK CAME ALONG, AND, NOT KNOWING HE WAS SPEAKING TO THE MASTER, ASKED BOKUSHU THE WAY TO THE MASTER'S ROOM.

BOKUSHU TOOK OFF HIS SANDAL AND HIT THE MONK ON THE HEAD WITH IT - THE MONK RAN OFF.

THEN BOKUSHU CALLED TO HIM, "OSHO!" AND THE MONK TURNED HIS HEAD.

"THAT'S THE WAY TO IT," BOKUSHU SAID, POINTING WITH HIS FINGER.

What has happened in this incident? Unless you lose your head, you cannot find your heart. Hitting the head of the monk with his sandal is simply a way of saying, "Please stop thinking." Except for

thought, nothing is a barrier to truth. But the monk became afraid, "This seems to be a madman. I am asking the way to the master's room and he hits me. It is better to run away from here. He may do something even more nasty." So he ran away.

Bokushu called him back, "OSHO!"

'Osho' is a very respectful word. It is a way of calling someone almost divine. It is in essence so respectful that only a disciple calls a master 'Osho'.

Bokushu called after him,"OSHO!" indicating: "Don't be afraid and don't escape. It is against your dignity. You are to me as worthy of respect as Buddha himself." And saying,"OSHO!" he said, pointing to his own room, "THAT'S THE WAY TO IT."

This kind of incident is impossible in this world today unless you are humble enough. If the master hits with his sandal on your head, you will start fighting with him. You will not think that he is a man worthy of respect. He will seem to be insane - you are simply asking the way and he hits you.

But once a different world existed. Bokushu did both things: first he hit him on the head with his sandal, and then he called him, "OSHO!" - You are also a master; who you are looking for? If you are looking for the master, this is the way. Drop your head outside; be humble, innocent. In your silence, without thought, you may find the master.

Ikkyu has written:

TO NOT TAKE IT TO HEART; THE REAL WAY IS ONE, ITSELF AS IT IS; THERE ARE NOT TWO, OR THREE.

Just one.

A poem by Zengetsu:

MIND, MIND, MIND - ABOVE THE PATH.

HERE ON MY MOUNTAIN, GRAY HAIR DOWN, I CHERISH BAMBOO SPROUTS, BRUSH CAREFULLY BY PINE TWIGS.

BURNING INCENSE, I OPEN A BOOK:

MIST OVER FLAGSTONES.

ROLLING THE BLIND, I CONTEMPLATE:

MOON IN THE POND.

OF MY OLD FRIENDS, HOW MANY KNOW THE WAY?

Zen has contributed a tremendous beauty to words. MOON IN THE POND. OF MY OLD FRIENDS, HOW MANY KNOW THE WAY? The way is simply above the mind; you just leave the mind aside.

Here, we are doing it every day - you put the mind aside and the door opens. And suddenly you are in the innermost space that is your treasure.

Maneesha has asked:

Maneesha, there is no way. Everyone is either a buddha awake or a buddha asleep. Between sleep and awakening, there is no path. Each day in the morning when you wake up, have you ever thought where sleep ends and waking starts? There is not even a small distance between sleep and waking. What is true in the ordinary world is also true in the ultimate experience. You are buddhas asleep. The buddha asleep is called bodhisattva - buddha in essence, buddha in the seed. Let the seed disappear in the soil, let the rains come, and green leaves will sprout and flowers will blossom.

There is no distinction. Everybody is either awake or asleep.

That's why I call you all buddhas. What does it matter if somebody wakes up today, somebody woke up yesterday, and somebody is waiting for tomorrow? The buddhahood is there whether you are asleep or awake. We will go on trying, pulling your leg, hitting on your head. In every device the essential part is to make you awake, really awake, a pillar of consciousness.

Another question she has asked:

Not of the way, Maneesha, but to remind you of yourself. The way is always a long journey. There is no need of any way. You can just here, now, be awake without traveling on any way. I don't talk about the way, I talk about awakening this very moment, like lightning, like a thunderbolt. And I don't think that if you decide to sleep a little longer, there is any harm in it.

Yes, Maneesha, I call you all buddhas in the same sense as Bokushu called the monk 'Osho'. I love you and I respect you; whether you are awake or asleep, that is a very small matter. It is so small, that before meditation we will laugh a little.

"Hey, Donatelli," shouts Rizzocola, "you ought-a pull-a your shades down when you kiss-a your wife.

I saw you last-a night. I saw-a everything!"

"Ha! Ha!" laughs Donatelli. "The joke-a is on-a you. I-a was not-a home last night!"

The doctor comes out of Rizzoli's bedroom and says, "Frankly, Mrs. Rizzoli, I don't like the way your husband looks at all."

"Nor do I" she replies. "But he is nice to the kids."

Big Mrs. Bertha Baloni gets into a taxi one night in downtown New York. After riding a while, she suddenly realizes that she has forgotten her purse and has no money to pay the fare. The meter reads ten dollars when Bertha cries, "Hey, mista driver, you-a better stop-a! I no can-a pay you!"

"Oh, that's all right," says the cabbie. "I will just-a pull into this-a little street-a, just-a get in the back seat with-a you, take off-a your panties ..."

"Wait!" interrupts Mrs. Baloni. "Mista, you-a gonna get a bad deal. My panties only cost-a forty-nine cents!"

Brian Ballworthy is an inexperienced young man. He has heard that a good way to arouse sexual desire in a girl who is not responding to the usual forms of wooing is to place her hand directly on one's organ.

He parks with his date in the local lovers' lane, but after an hour he has only a sisterly kiss to show for his efforts. So Brian decides to put his new technique into action. He takes the girl's hand and places it firmly on his dick. The response is instantaneous. The girl shouts at him with the longest stream of abuse he has ever heard. Stunned, he tries to reply, but she won't listen, and demands to be taken home.

When they reach her parent's home, she starts shouting at him again. Finally, she runs out of breath and says, "Well, do you have anything to say for yourself?"

"Yes, I have," Brian grimaces painfully, "please let go!"

Now, Nivedano ... give the first beat.

(Drumbeat) (Gibberish) Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat) Be silent.

Close your eyes.

No movement of the body.

Just become frozen so that you can enter into yourself.

This silence, Osho, this silence, the buddha.

Deeper, deeper, deeper.

The deeper you go, the more oceanic becomes the experience.

The dewdrop slips from the lotus leaf and disappears in the ocean.

This is our eternal reality.

This is our divineness.

There is no other God than this experience.

There is no other prayer than this tremendous silence, this peace, this ecstasy.

To make it deeper, Osho, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat) Relax, just as if you have died.

The body may go on breathing, but you remain in.

Pull yourself as much as possible inwards.

The more you are in, the more the buddha is awake.

At the very center of your being,

you are the ultimate experience of being a buddha.

Drink it, let it sink into every fiber and cell of your body, your mind.

Carry it twenty-four hours within you - just like a silent flame, showing you the path, reminding you that you are the goal, not the way; the God, not the devotee; the sought, not the seeker.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat) You can all come back, and for a few seconds, just sit like buddhas in your grandeur, in your grace.

Blissful is the night with so many buddhas, breathing together to the same song, listening together to the same music, feeling together the very heartbeat of the universe.

Except this, there is no religiousness.

And this religiousness

is neither Christian, nor Hindu, nor Mohammedan.

It is freedom from all boundaries, it knows no limits.

Be unlimited, be the ocean.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate the gathering of so many buddhas?

Yes, Osho.