Listen to the message of the run

"THAT'S A BUDDHA," SHE REPLIED.

Maneesha, a few moments ago there was no rain and now it is raining. Existence is irrational. You don't ask the rains, "Why are you raining now when you were not raining a few minutes ago?" You don't ask the bamboos, "Why are you dancing with the rain, when you were standing like absolutely British gentlemen?"

Existence is irrational. The moment you ask why you have missed the point. This anecdote is great, great also in reference to your meditations.

From a young man of twenty years, this is a great indication of a great future ahead. The stone statue of buddha cannot deceive him. At the most, it looks like a man. It is not a man: it does not breathe, it does not weep, it does not laugh. It is carved out of a stone; it is simply dead and will never laugh or cry or feel. How can it?

Hyakujo said rightly, "This certainly looks like a man; but I will not call it a buddha, because the very word 'buddha' means awareness and this stone is not aware. I want to become a buddha afterwards - not like a stone statue but a dancing, singing, laughing, alive buddha."

A buddha that cannot dance is not much of a buddha. A buddha is essential silence and being. If you can be silent this evening, the opportunity is great. The whole sky is pouring around you with a single indication: "Wake up, you have been asleep too long."

In this silence that awakening is possible. In this silence the stone buddha can start laughing, can start dancing, can start breathing. And remember, just as Hyakujo was not ready to worship a stone buddha, I am also against all worship.

The worshipper is the worshipped.

You don't have to worship anyone else.

Your innermost being is the highest and the most precious, the most existential and conscious point.

There is nothing higher than it. You need not worship, you can only meditate.

Remember the difference between worship and meditation. The mother was saying, "Worship, pray!"

and Hyakujo, a young man, was saying, "I want to be."

Prayer is always addressed to somebody else.

Prayer is not religious.

Worship is not religious.

Being fully aware and silent is the only way of knowing the taste of religion. This is a good opportunity.

The clouds come at the right time. Listen to the message of the rain. It simply is: just be like it. In a silent space, the dance of the rain, the whisper of the bamboos... and you have come home.

MANY YEARS LATER, HYAKUJO BECAME A MONK. ONE DAY, AS ATTENDANT TO BASO, - a great master, one of the greatest after Mahakashyapa - HE WENT WANDERING IN THE MOUNTAINS. ON HIS RETURN HE SUDDENLY BEGAN TO WEEP.

Note the point, that he suddenly began to weep. There was no reason at all.

Why? That is the question mind goes on persisting in. For the mind, everything has to be based on a certain reason, a cause. Mind does not allow anything without reason, without causality. And because of this persistence, mind misses the most essential question of your own being: why you are.

You can look here and there. Perhaps somebody will tell you why you are. But nobody in the whole history of consciousness has been able to say why he is. All that you can do is shrug your shoulders:

I am, there is no question of why.

Hyakujo was right in telling the monk, "GO AND ASK THE MASTER."

Now this is too much for the reasonable mind, this is absurd... Now look, the rains are trying to stop.

This is not right. Just before they were at their peak and now they are becoming silent to participate in your silence.

But there is no why. You cannot ask the bamboos; you cannot ask the roses; you cannot ask any living being. Life simply is. Sometimes it weeps, sometimes it laughs, and when it weeps without any reason, weeping is a tremendous cleansing. And when it laughs without reason, the laughing reaches to a deeper point in your being. Like an arrow it hits to the very heart of you and your existence.

The monk must have been a man of intellectual merit, a professor.

What is the problem? This is what Zen calls a quantum leap: from mind to no-mind; from reason to existence; from thinking to silence - a quantum leap. Mind cannot stop asking why. But your consciousness never asks why. The acceptance of consciousness and its trust in existence is absolute and uncategorical.

Have you ever asked why you are? You can ask about things... why a bicycle is or a car is. They have some utility. But what utility have you? Yes, you can rent a bicycle but that is not much of a utility. Somebody else would have done it. You cannot find a reason, wherever you search and search. The answer will be simply, "I am here without any reason." Why is irrelevant.

This I am calling the quantum leap. Meditation is nothing but a quantum leap from continuously asking questions into drowning yourself in a pure innocence where no question arises and no answer has to be given.

This is moment to moment living.

This is moment to moment loving.

This is the dance of the moment.

This small anecdote contains the very essence of Zen. If you can understand this small anecdote, you have understood all that is worth understanding.

Just be: it is your birthright.

There is no question of why.

You have been here all the time and you will be here all the time. It is a wrong conception when we say: Time passes by. The reality is that you, the witness, remain always the same, never old, never young, never child, never man, never woman - just a point of light which goes on from eternity to eternity. There is no reason to ask. And anyway, whom are you going to ask? Other than you who can answer why you are here? And you have not gone deep enough into yourself to find who you are. To ask the question, you have to find yourself first.

Those who have gone within themselves to find who is in have not returned back, because the further in they went, the more the ice melted; and when they reached to the innermost, they themselves were not there, only a pure space. And this pure space is the only scripture Zen will accept as holy.

It is not man-made. It is not born. It knows nothing of death.

It simply goes on and on, flowering in many ways, forming many houses to live in, moving from house to house, from body to body, from one species into another species. But all this movement does not leave any trace of change in your authenticity.

Hyakujo was absolutely right when he said, "I was weeping a little while ago, you are right. And now I am laughing. And who knows what is going to happen after my laughter?"

It is the very essence of Zen when I say to you about our meditation: Don't ask why we have to go into gibberish. You have to go into gibberish because you have to go out of it. Your minds are full of gibberish and nothing else. Say everything that you ever wanted to say and have not been able to say because of civilization, education, culture, society. Here, nobody is listening: everybody is engaged in his own business.

Only a few idiots may be watching what is happening. Rather than participating they are observing a phenomenal thing. But they will not know the taste when - like after all this rain a coolness comes to you - after gibberish a silence penetrates your being. Gibberish is simply throwing away all garbage.

It is difficult to do it anywhere else because you will wonder what people are going to think. This is the place where nobody is thinking about you. It is your business what you are saying, what you are doing, laughing or crying or speaking Chinese without knowing it... and making gestures. Nobody has time. It is so short that everybody has to do his thing first.

When you are in gibberish, you are alone; everybody is alone, minding his own business. You don't interfere and ask anybody, "What are you doing? What are you saying? What language?" No language, no rationality... everybody is trying to throw out the craziness. Everybody is trying to get out of the mind, out of the why.

And once you are out of the mind, you are in.

To be in the mind is to be out of yourself.

To be out of the mind is to be in your own being.

Maneesha has asked a question. Before answering her question I have an apology to make to Rupesh. Nivedano has been beating the drum. Now that crazy guy has gone into Rajasthan in search of more rocks to make a bigger fountain and waterfall. He was very worried about what would happen to the drum. Who will drum?

I had to convince him, "Don't be worried. Whoever drums, I will continue to call Nivedano." He was immensely happy. But I had promised only for the last series, which has now ended. Poor Rupesh was beating the drum under the name of Nivedano.

Yesterday, the series changed: I thought, now it is time to call Rupesh. But somebody mistakenly wrote on my board the name Arup. I wondered for a moment, has Rupesh changed his name without even informing me? But there was no time. So I had to call Arup. And I could see, when Rupesh gave a beat to the drum, the anger. I am sorry, Rupesh. Those drums are not responsible for it.

Some drum is responsible, but the drums you are beating are not responsible.

Today I will call Rupesh until this series ends. But please be kind to the drums.

Question 1:

Now, Maneesha's question:

Maneesha, whether you know it or not, you cannot do anything else than just to be. There is no way of being anything else except what you are. A rose is a rose is a rose. And however it tries, it cannot become the lotus. And the same is true about the lotus. It cannot become the marigold.

Everybody has to be respectable and dignified in his own being. Your thinking is very superficial, the first layer, not essential... it can be changed; it changes continuously. Your feeling is also not very deep. It is a little deeper than thinking, but it can also change in a split second.

You know your thinking changes and your feelings change. But there must be something inside you that does not change. That is your being, the unchangeable. Remain rooted in the being, then slowly, slowly you start growing in a way totally different from how people grow ordinarily. When people become more knowledgeable, more learned, their thinking is growing. When people become more emotional, sentimental, their feeling is growing; but they themselves remain the same.

If you know your being and remain there without going astray, you will find a totally different kind of growing - not growing old, but growing up; not growing into something else but growing more and more into yourself, being more and more you. And this brings great blessings, immense ecstasies.

Before we enter into ourselves, a little outside evening walk will do.

The zoo has hit upon hard times, and as the animals die, the director can't afford to replace them...

until he has a brilliant idea.

Sometime later, Kowalski is walking past the zoo, when he sees a sign, "Strong man wanted, apply within."

So he goes in and the director tells him, "Our star attraction, Gregory the gorilla, has died, and I want you to replace him. All you have to do is put on this gorilla suit, go out there and thump your chest and eat peanuts."

Kowalski starts work right away. Every day he thrills the crowd by jumping and thumping. But the climax of his act is when he climbs up a tree in his pen and throws peanuts at the lions next door, who get really mad and try to climb the fence.

Unfortunately, one afternoon Kowalski is up the tree when the branch breaks and he falls into the lions' den. He jumps up and starts screaming and shouting for help, until one of the lions walks over to him growling and snarling, and then says out of the corner of his mouth, "Shut up, Kowalski, or we will all lose our jobs!"

Meditate over this. It is pure Zen. Everybody is hiding behind a coat: somebody behind a gorilla coat, somebody behind a lion coat; somebody is a mouse, henpecked of course... Come out! And just be. All these coats that you are wearing are not your being.

During their tour of Europe, Ronald and Nancy are visiting Ireland.

One day, Nancy Reagan makes a discreet visit to the office of doctor Rattle O'Bones.

"How may I help you?" asks the doctor graciously.

"Well," begins Nancy, hesitantly, "it is a delicate matter."

"Do not worry, Mrs. Reagan," says O'Bones. "You can be frank with me and I will be frank with you."

"Very well," says Nancy Reagan. "Since coming on this tour, with all the different foods, my stomach is always full of gas. And although the gas has no smell and makes no noise, I find it quite embarrassing. Whoops!" she says, smiling sheepishly, "there goes another one!"

The doctor tries to cover his nose discreetly. Then he pulls some pills from his desk drawer and scribbles furiously on his notepad.

"Here," he says to Nancy Reagan, "this is an appointment with a leading specialist, and these pills should help restore your sense of smell!"

Two old Virginia farmers meet on the street.

"Hey, Jed," says one, "I have got a mule, sick with distemper. What did you give yours when it had that?"

"I gave him turpentine," replies Jed.

A week later, they meet again and the first old farmer shouts, "Hey, Jed, I gave my mule some turpentine like you said, it killed him!"

"Funny," replies Jed, "it killed mine too!"

Luigi's wife has just died, and as the funeral party is leaving the graveyard, Luigi is making a terrible scene.

"What am I-a gonna do?" he cries, tearing at his hair. "What am I-a gonna do?"

"My son," says father Garibaldi, the priest, "I know you have suffered a terrible loss, but you will get over it in time." And he starts leading Luigi towards the exit.

"What am I-a gonna do?" sobs Luigi. "What am I-a gonna do?"

"Just try to control yourself," replies the priest. "Time will pass, you will get over your grief and maybe in a year or two, you will meet a young woman and get married again, and everything will be fine!"

"Si, father, I know all that!" says Luigi, "but what am I-a gonna do tonight?"

Rupesh, tonight beat the drum.

(DRUMBEAT)

(Gibberish)

Rupesh...

(DRUMBEAT)

Everybody become silent, absolutely in.

Close your eyes, no movement, just be still.

Feel the beauty of this moment.

Feel the freshness and the youth of this moment.

Feel the bliss and the dance

in the deepest core of your being.

Rupesh... The beat.

(DRUMBEAT)

Everybody relaxes into death.

Let the body breathe, don't bother.

You don't have to stop breathing.

You have to stop being out;

be in.

And take the quantum leap

from mind into no-mind.

Feel the silent fragrance within.

This moment is a divine moment.

This moment you are a buddha.

Pin down your consciousness to this moment. No head, no heart but just pure consciousness.

Rupesh...

(DRUMBEAT)

You can come back to life,

to new life,

with new light,

with new joy,

with new eyes to see,

with new senses to feel,

with new intelligence to understand.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate now?

YES!