The man of experience forgets the desire to condemn

Maneesha, in a world full of insanity, you few are fortunate to discuss the great matter of inner journey. These anecdotes contain so much, although they are so small. It is almost like a dewdrop containing the whole ocean. In fact, it does contain the whole ocean, because the taste is the same.

These anecdotes are not only to be heard, but to be lived moment to moment. As I go in, you also go in yourself. These are strategies of Zen to bring the unaware to awareness.

KASSAN AND JOZAN WERE GOING ALONG, TALKING TOGETHER, WHEN JOZAN SAID, "IF, WITHIN LIFE-AND-DEATH, THERE WERE NO BUDDHA, THERE WOULD BE NO LIFE-AND- DEATH."

A perfect statement. If in life and in death there was no consciousness, no buddhahood, there would be no life and no death. It is absolutely and categorically true. Our birth is the birth of the buddha and our life is the life of a buddha, whether we remember it or not. And our death is going to be the death of a buddha. But remember: although on the screen it appears that there is a beginning and there is an end, existence has no framework; it is not a window, it is not enclosed by death and life. The buddha within you just comes like a breeze from eternity and moves through your heart, again into eternity. From the outside it may appear that somebody is born, somebody dies. From the inside, if you are aware, nothing is born, nobody dies. Only forms change, but the center of all our activities remains the same forever.

To experience this center is the whole effort of all meditation, because once you know it you are relaxed; you cannot be miserable. Even if you try, you cannot be tense, you cannot be angry, you cannot be greedy, you cannot have a lust for power. Once you know your own center, you reach to heights from where even the clouds are far below. You have touched the blueness of empty space.

This traveler is called by Kassan and Jozan 'the Buddha'.

KASSAN SAID, "IF THE BUDDHA WERE WITHIN LIFE-AND-DEATH, THERE WOULD BE NO DELUSION WITH REGARD TO LIFE-AND-DEATH."

Right, but not perfect. There is nothing wrong in it, but even to say THERE WOULD BE NO DELUSION WITH REGARD TO LIFE-AND-DEATH, is unnecessary. Awakening to your buddhahood, all that is false disappears, just like when you bring a lamp into a dark room - the darkness disappears. You don't say that the darkness has gone away, because nothing goes.

The darkness was never there in fact; there was only an absence - the absence of light. The moment you bring light in, of course, the absence of light cannot remain. Nothing has gone out, only light has come in. As the buddha is awakened within you, it is not that delusion or darkness or hallucination disappears. Your buddha is awake, and all around, from infinity to infinity, there is only consciousness and nothing else.

THEY ARGUED BACK AND FORTH, AND THERE WAS NO END TO IT. FINALLY, THEY DECIDED TO ASK DAIBAI, who was a great master. KASSAN SAID TO HIM, "OF THESE TWO OPINIONS, WHICH IS THE MORE FAMILIAR?" - closer, more intimate, more approximate to the wordless experience?

DAIBAI SAID, "ONE IS FAMILIAR, ONE IS DISTANT."

"WHICH IS THE FAMILIAR ONE?" SAID KASSAN.

"GO AWAY AND ASK ME AGAIN TOMORROW," RESPONDED DAIBAI.

THE NEXT DAY KASSAN CAME AGAIN AND ASKED. DAIBAI SAID, "A FAMILIAR ONE DOES NOT ASK. ONE WHO ASKS IS NOT FAMILIAR."

What a great statement. "You ask only because you don't know. You ask only because it is not your experience. The one who asks is not familiar with the truth. It is not his experience, he is just repeating sutras, scriptures. Where is the other one, with whom you were discussing? He has not come to ask, because he knows.

"Knowing brings a silence where no question arises, because question is another name for doubt.

One who knows simply knows it is so. The other one has not come back to ask - he must be familiar.

He knows, so what is the point of harassing the master? Because you have come, it shows that you don't know; you are very distant."

KASSAN AFTERWARDS SAID, "AT THAT TIME, WHEN I WAS WITH DAIBAI, I LOST MY BUDDHA- EYE."

What he means by this is that being with Daibai, the master, he lost all his knowledge, all his intelligence, all his mind - he lost everything, including the Buddha-eye. He used to think that he knew. He used to think that he had got the Buddha-eye.

The Buddha-eye means the same as the expression 'the third eye'; it is just a symbol of looking inwards. Your two eyes open outwards; just between them there is a point where you look inwards.

That point is symbolically called 'the third eye'. Remember, it is only a metaphor.

To be with a master it is absolutely necessary to lose your mind; to be so innocent that no question arises; to be filled with wonder, but not with knowledge; to be just trust and love, not a questionnaire.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, HOGEN ASKED HAKUYO, "WHERE IS THE DWELLING PLACE OF THE BUDDHA?"

HAKUYO ANSWERED, "NO FIXED PLACE."

Hogen must have been a very intellectual person.

He said, "IF THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE BUDDHA, HOW CAN IT NOT BE FIXED, NO SPECIAL PLACE?"

HAKUYO SAID, "IF IT WERE IN A SPECIAL PLACE, IT WOULD NOT BE THE ABSOLUTE BUDDHA."

To be in a special place is to be imprisoned. To have an address is to be limited. To have a name is to be confined. And the very word 'buddha' means the unlimited, the unconfined, the overwhelming, the whole universe. It cannot have a special place.

But Hogen was not just an intellectual, because later on he himself became a great master.

Listening to this, Hogen agreed. But it is still agreement, it is not realization. To agree with me is one thing, to experience with me is another. Agreement is of the mind, experience is of the beyond, where I am no more and you are no more - just a pure silence blossoms.

Two awakened persons cannot be in the same room for the simple reason that two awakened consciousnesses will immediately merge into each other.

AT ANOTHER TIME, A MONK SAID TO KYOSEI, "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF 'THE BHAGAVAT IN THE TEN DIRECTIONS IS ONE ROAD TO NIRVANA'?"

You have to understand first the meaning of Bhagavat. You have called me Bhagwan. The word 'Bhagwan' comes from 'Bhagavat'. Bhagavat means 'the blessed one', 'the blissful one'; and when somebody reaches to this blissfulness, the pure quality of being Bhagavat takes a form. That form we have called, in the East, Bhagwan. It has nothing to do with God. Anybody who has translated Bhagwan as God is absolutely wrong. Bhagwan is concerned with Bhagavat - the infinite consciousness.

When you open up to the ultimate, immediately it pours into you. You are no more an ordinary human being - you have transcended. Your insight has become the insight of the whole existence. Now you are no more separate - you have found your roots. Otherwise, ordinarily, everybody is moving without roots, not knowing from where their heart goes on receiving energy, not knowing who goes on breathing in them, not knowing the life juice that is running inside them. And the moment this life juice goes out, you will be left an empty shell, a corpse.

It is not the body, it is not the mind - it is something transcendental to all duality, that is called Bhagavat - THE BHAGAVAT IN THE TEN DIRECTIONS.

Ordinarily, people talk about four directions. But some people became aware that between each two directions, there is also a possibility of another one. So - north, south, east, west: these directions are commonplace, accepted and agreed upon. Then there are four directions more, one between each two directions. Eight directions have been accepted by the philosophical people, but ten directions include something more, because one direction must go deeper, which is neither south nor north, which is not any out of the eight. And one direction should go upwards, vertical; that, too, is not included in the eight directions. These two directions - the vertical height of Everest and the depth of the Pacific - are, in fact, the spiritual directions. The other eight are geographical.

These two have nothing to do with geography. They are your inner experiences of heights and depths, and they come together. By the side of each great mountain, there is a great valley. The valley and the mountain are always together. Your inner being, when it opens, first experiences two directions: the height, the depth. And then slowly, slowly, as this becomes your established situation, you start looking around, spreading into all other eight directions. The Bhagavat is the ten directions ... still, it is said that it "IS ONE ROAD TO NIRVANA."

It seems to Kyosei that there is a contradiction: one road and ten directions? Obviously it is contradictory, but only for those who are just thinking about it. Those who are experiencing, they know that the road is one - that it is of height and depth. And once you have attained to the point where your height and your depth meet, then you can look around to the very circumference of the universe. Then your consciousness starts unfolding in all ten directions, but the road has been one.

KYOSEI SAID, "IN A HOUSE, THERE ARE NOT TWO MASTERS."

There cannot be. You bring two nothingnesses and they will become one, because what will be dividing them? There cannot be any fence between two nothingnesses. Between two zeros ... how can you make them two? They will jump into each other and become one. The moment someone becomes enlightened - it is not that, in the history of enlightenment, one more enlightened person is added - he simply disappears in the ocean. Enlightenment simply means losing your number, your personality, your ego, your "I am," and just becoming part of a tremendous isness.

Kassan said to his monks:

FIND ME IN THE TIPS OF A HUNDRED GRASSES.

RECOGNIZE THE PRINCE IN A NOISY MARKET!

These were Kassan's last words before he died: "Now you will not be able to find me here, in this body, but don't be sad - FIND ME IN THE TIPS OF A HUNDRED GRASSES."

Just look silently and deeply and you will find your master everywhere. The whole existence will become suffused with your master. And of course the moment a master dies, he makes the whole existence sacred for his disciples. In the stones they will touch him, in the flowers they will see his colors, in the rainbows they will see his beauty. A disciple becomes so deeply immersed in the consciousness of the master, that when the master's consciousness spreads all over existence, the disciple at least can see it. That's why in Zen when a master dies the disciples dance; they make a ceremony of it, because their master is freed from all boundaries of body and mind. This freedom of their master is an indication of their own freedom. This freedom has to be respected, recognized, through their ceremony, through their songs and dances.

Maneesha has asked one question:

Maneesha, the difference is very small, almost negligible. Those who are outside are sleeping buddhas. Those inside are just awakening. Outside it is night and people are fast asleep, snoring.

Here, in this moment of depth, of silence, you are awake - this is the only difference. What is the difference between when you go to sleep at night and when you wake up in the morning? It is exactly the same difference - they are not inferior who are outside, and you are not superior because you are inside. They have just decided to sleep a little more; and you are fed up with sleep and you want to wake up. It is everybody's choice.

As far as the buddha is concerned, he will eternally wait for you. Whenever you choose to open your eyes inwards, you will find him. He is there - in your sleep, in your dreams, in your sanity, in your insanity. He is your very life. So even in the insane person, there is as much buddhahood as in the awakened, the enlightened. The quality of both is the same. The only small difference is that one has recognized himself, the other is postponing.

But this is not to condemn the outsiders as sinners, as religions have always done. Condemnation, in itself, is a non-religious attitude. A person is neither a sinner nor a saint; it is just that a few people are asleep and a few are awake. The people who are asleep have their joys, their dreams, their nightmares. The people who are awake have their blessings, their ecstasies. An awakened person cannot condemn the sleeping one, he can only be compassionate.

Because of this very point, I say unto you that all your religions have been committing a great sin in condemning people. I cannot condemn anyone, because I know who you are. Whether you are asleep or awake, that is your business; but I know that whatever is within me, the same consciousness is vibrating within you.

What does it matter if you are asleep, and drinking tea, and smoking cigarettes? These stupid things cannot destroy your buddhahood. But that is what religions have been saying: "Don't do this, don't do that." And the people who are saying this are simply quoting scriptures; it is not their own experience.

The man of experience forgets completely the desire to condemn. His compassion is great. His love is infinite. He knows that we are creatures of eternity, so what does it matter? There are only seven days in the week. Somebody decides to wake up on Monday, and somebody decides to wake up on Sunday. More than that, there is no difference. In my vision, these are the only two classes: a few people sleeping, a few people awake. But basically they are constituted of the same stuff, that we call buddhahood, and everybody is free to continue to sleep or to wake up.

The master, at the most, functions at the bedside like an alarm clock. The clock does not condemn you; it just reminds you that it is time, it is morning. If you want to take another turn and pull your blanket over, it is up to you - the clock is completely unconcerned. It has done its work, it has made you aware that it is morning and time to get up. But you are free; if you want to get up late today - perhaps last night's party's hangover ... so what? Just don't snore. Sleeping is okay, but snoring is absolutely interfering with other sleepers.

A strange event happened: one night I was in a train and in the compartment there were four sleeping berths. I could not believe it, that the three persons in the berths looked very alike. Later on, I came to know that they were triplets; and their snoring ... I tried hard to remember that the whole world is maya, illusion. But their snoring was such that no philosophy was of any help. They snored in such harmony .... First one would snore, and two would remain silent. Then the second would give the answer, more loudly. Then the third would come in ... and the round would go on.

And I was caught in the middle.

In the middle of the night, when I became fed up with that music, I had to do something. I started snoring, fully awake. I woke up all the three fellows. They came down and looked at me, and because my eyes were open, they became afraid. They said, "What is the matter? You are awake and you are snoring so loudly."

I said, "If you don't stop your snoring, I am going to do this exercise the whole night."

They said, "At least, please close your eyes, because that makes our hearts tremble."

I said, "Then learn the lesson. I have been waiting for hours. Stop this symphony!"

They said, "What we can do? We are triplets, so whatever one does, the other does. All our habits are similar - snoring too! We are helpless."

I said, "Then, remember: I will snore with open eyes so loudly that you will not be able to sleep, nor will anybody in the neighboring compartment."

They said, "It is better we should wake up and read something. You do whatever you want, but please, don't do two things together: snoring and open eyes. Either close your eyes and snore - we are accustomed to it; or if you don't want to snore, you can open your eyes and do anything - whatever you want. We will try our best not to snore, but do you understand our helplessness? In sleep one tends to forget all about one's decisions."

I said, "I know, but I am tired. I have been traveling for twenty-four hours; you have just started. So sit down and read something."

I supplied them books, saying, "These are the books you can read, and let me sleep. And remember, if anybody snores, I am going to do even nastier things. This was just a sample."

Those poor fellows, the whole night, had to read books which they did not understand at all.

In the morning when I woke up, I said, "Now you can sleep. I am going to the bathroom. Snore as much as you can - the full quota. Condense! While I am taking my bath ... I will take as long as possible. Rejoice in your snoring!"

But there was no condemnation in it. I enjoyed it immensely. It was tiring, but it was hilarious, too.

Maneesha, never fall into the trap of the old religious approach. The religions have always condemned people for such small things, and still they talk about compassion! But the people who are doing small things are just doing them because they are unconscious of their own selves; and they are tired, utterly bored. Out of boredom, somebody becomes alcoholic; out of boredom, somebody starts taking drugs; out of boredom, people commit suicide. But they all need the compassion of those who are aware and alert.

This is a place to be conscious, and with consciousness comes compassion, never condemnation.

From you, the whole world should be showered with love - rain all over the world. Perhaps your joy, your dance, your consciousness may provoke the same in the sleeping ones. And it is a great joy to wake up a buddha.

I am having immense joy in waking you up. To my last breath, I am going to continue harassing you.

What do you think all these discourses are? - Just sheer harassment!

Before I begin the harassment, a few laughters, so that anybody who is asleep will wake up. Laughter is simply a strategy, because when everybody is laughing, you cannot sleep. With seven thousand people laughing, it will be a miracle if you can sleep.

Kowalski is sitting around the kitchen reading the newspaper. His wife, Olga, is getting very bored and frustrated.

"Hey, Kowalski," says Olga, "will you take me to the zoo?"

"No, sweetheart," Kowalski replies, "anyone who wants to see you can come here."

Mr. Smith is not well at all, so he goes to Doctor Bones for some tests. The next day his wife comes in to pick up the results, but Bones is looking worried.

"I'm afraid, Mrs. Smith, there has been a mix-up," says Bones. "I had two Mr. Smiths in here for tests yesterday: one has total loss of memory, and one has AIDS - and I don't know which test belongs to your husband."

"My God!" cries Mrs. Smith. "How can I find out?"

"Simple," says Bones, "send your husband out for a walk, and if he comes back, don't fuck him!"

Olga Kowalski goes to the doctor in desperation. "You have got to help me, doctor!" she cries. "I have got twelve children and I just can't stand the thought of looking after any more of the little monsters. What can I do?"

"Well," says the doctor, "have you tried contraceptives?"

"I can't do that," says Olga. "My husband is a strict Catholic. But if I have any more kids to look after, I will go nuts!"

"Okay," says the doctor. "I have been experimenting with a new method. It is not one hundred percent safe, but you can try it if you like."

"Anything," cries Olga. "I will do anything!"

So the doctor takes out Olga's womb and implants a monkey's womb.

The operation is a success and the doctor tells Olga to come back for a check-up in a few months.

When Olga comes back, the doctor asks, "How is everything going?"

"Just great," Olga replies. "They come out, hop onto a tree, and off they go!"

Now, this is the right time ... Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat) (Gibberish) Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat) Be silent, close your eyes.

Feel your body to be frozen, so that you can concentrate your life energy, your consciousness, within yourself.

With this silence, you enter into a different dimension:

the dimension of your within.

It is a vast opening into the inner sky.

Open your wings without any fear, because you cannot meet on this way anyone other than yourself.

Blessed is this evening.

So many buddhas, and they have all disappeared into one consciousness.

In this Buddha Hall there are no more seven thousand people, but a single silence, a single blissfulness, a single buddhahood.

To make it more clear and more deep, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat) Relax. Let go of the body, as if you are dead, so that life energy can concentrate totally at the center.

This is the source; the beginning, and the end.

In this silence, thousands of roses have blossomed.

In this silence, thousands of lotuses have opened their leaves.

To go on deepening inwards, you will find the immortal element that passes from body to body, form to form, but is in itself eternal.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat) Come back.

Sit down for a few moments, remembering the experience, because this experience has to become an undercurrent for twenty-four hours - day in, day out.

Then there is no birth and no death; you have found the traveler, the eternal pilgrim.

Religion is basically concerned with this; not with any church, or temple, or mosque, or synagogue.

It is concerned with your awakening to your ultimate potential.

It makes you joyful, compassionate, loving, relishing your freedom and never interfering with anybody else's freedom.

This will give you your dignity, and this will also give you a tremendous feeling of gratitude towards the whole.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate the meeting of so many buddhas?

Yes, Osho.