A very dangerous place

Maneesha, the greatest friend is within you; so is the greatest enemy. Without you there is no danger - all is absolutely beautiful and silent. It is within you that jealousy is burning, anger is poisoning; it is within you that greed is growing. And all these together are clouding your consciousness and destroying your individuality, your essential existence.

Zen is not concerned with words, it is concerned with your being. It is not a philosophy. It is not even a religion. It is a way of seeing, a way of being, a very strange style of living through consciousness and not living through unconsciousness.

Before I enter into this sutra, I am reminded of Gautam Buddha, who is the original source of the only religiousness that has come into existence in the world. There have been religions - many, almost three hundred religions are already in existence - but religiousness is absolutely absent.

Religion is possible to practice, just like an actor practices. Religion is possible through knowledge, because mind is a great bio-computer; you can accumulate as much knowledge as is contained in all the libraries of the world in a single mind. But knowledge is not knowing, knowledge is not wisdom, knowledge is not awakening. On the contrary, it may help you to sleep a little deeper because it will give you a false sense that you know.

And this is the greatest tragedy that can happen to a man. Knowing nothing, but filled with borrowed knowledge, a great ego arises but your moon disappears in the clouds, in the dust of old scriptures and doctrines. Your presentness is covered by many layers; you are almost lost in a jungle of concepts, theologies, philosophies, dogmas.

Gautam Buddha is perhaps the first man in human history who has made the distinction between knowledge and knowing. Knowledge is always borrowed - knowing is your own understanding.

Knowledge is cheap. Knowing is a tremendous revolution, a metamorphosis.

One day Gautam Buddha and his disciple, Ananda, are passing from one village to another village.

On the way, a fly sits on Buddha's forehead. He was talking with Ananda - he continued talking, just as you would have done, and moved his hand to make the fly go away. Then suddenly he stopped, and again moved his hand ... very consciously, although there was no fly.

Ananda asked, "What are you doing?"

He said, "I am showing you that you can act unconsciously, the way I acted, and you can act consciously. When you act consciously there is grace and there is beauty and there is you. When you act unconsciously, it is just acting in sleep."

This small anecdote contains many significant points - not for the curious one, not for the knowledgeable one, but only for the seeker.

DOKIN'S DISCIPLE, DORIN, BECAME A MONK AT THE AGE OF NINE, TOOK THE VOWS AT TWENTY-ONE AND STUDIED THE Kegon Sutra. LATER IN LIFE HE ENTERED THE DENSE PINE FOREST OF MOUNT SHIMBO, AND DID ZAZEN UP A TREE.

Zazen is simply sitting, doing nothing ... not even thinking, just pure being. From my own experience I can say to you that sitting on a tree is the best place; just you have to be very friendly with the tree.

The tree supports your silence; it is rooted deep in the earth. It has no mind, it does not chatter with you, but it surrounds ... its aura, its sensitivity helps you, in a synchronicity.

Gautam Buddha became awakened under the bodhi tree. The bodhi tree got its name bodhi because Gautama became Buddha under it. Scientists have been looking into the constituents of a bodhi tree - is there something special under it? And they have found that the same element that makes a man more intelligent than others, makes the bodhi tree more intelligent than other trees. It has a tremendous amount of intelligence. So it was not a coincidence that Buddha, sitting under the bodhi tree, became enlightened. He owes his gratitude to the bodhi tree also.

And he showed it. Before dying he told his disciples, "There is no need to make a statue of me. You will make temples, but in your temples make a statue of the bodhi tree. My gratitude is tremendous towards the bodhi tree."

For three hundred years after Gautam Buddha the temples carried, in place of Buddha's statue, marble carved as a bodhi tree.

Zazen simply means not to think, not to dream, not to imagine. Become one - as the tree - sensitive, alert, dancing with the wind, rejoicing in the sun ... surrounded by the fragrance of the tree, but with no activity on your part.

FOR THIS REASON HE WAS CALLED CHOKA ZENJI, MEANING "BIRD-NEST ZENJI," AND JAKUSO ZENJI, MEANING "MAGPIE NEST," BY HIS CONTEMPORARIES BECAUSE THE BIRDS AND MAGPIES BUILT THEIR NESTS BESIDE HIM.

WHEN THE PREFECT OF THE DISTRICT, CALLED HAKURAKUTEN, CAME TO VISIT DORIN, HE REMARKED, "YOU ARE IN A VERY DANGEROUS PLACE!"

He was sitting high on a tree from where, obviously, one can fall - and in a deep forest where wild animals roam. The prefect was practically and pragmatically right: YOU ARE IN A VERY DANGEROUS PLACE! But Dorin said, "YOU ARE IN A MORE DANGEROUS ONE!"

HAKURAKUTEN ASKED, "WHAT IS DANGEROUS ABOUT BEING IN CHARGE OF THIS PROVINCE?"

DORIN REPLIED, "HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT YOU ARE NOT IN DANGER WHEN YOUR PASSIONS ARE BURNING LIKE FIRE AND YOU CAN'T STOP WORRYING ABOUT THIS AND THAT?"

The real danger is not from the outside, the real danger is from the wrong functioning of your mind.

And you never get out of the wrong functioning of the mind into a space where mind is no more, but only a pure consciousness.

HAKURAKUTEN THEN ASKED, "WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF BUDDHISM?"

DORIN ANSWERED IN THE WORDS OF SHAKYAMUNI, Gautam Buddha:

NOT TO DO ANY EVIL,

TO DO ALL GOOD,

TO PURIFY ONESELF -

THIS IS THE TEACHING

OF ALL THE BUDDHAS.

HAKURAKUTEN SAID,

"ANY CHILD OF THREE KNOWS THIS."

DORIN SAID, "THAT'S SO - ANY CHILD OF THREE knows IT, BUT EVEN A MAN OF EIGHTY CAN'T do IT."

Knowing and knowing - and the difference is great. Knowing from the outside, knowing from scriptures or teachers or priests, is a false knowing. All scholars are false.

Knowing as your own experience ... it is a taste. Nobody else can do it for you. It is a deep smell of a roseflower - nobody else can do it for you. It is the experience of your own existence, entering into your deepest core. Out of that experience, what Buddha says ...

NOT TO DO ANY EVIL,

TO DO ALL GOOD,

TO PURIFY ONESELF -

THIS IS THE TEACHING

OF ALL THE BUDDHAS.

You will have to understand things differently. It is not the beginning, it is the outcome of your self- knowledge. As you become centered in yourself, you cannot do what is evil, you cannot do what is ugly. Centered within yourself, grace arises, a beauty fills your heart. A creativity, a song, a poetry, signifying the unknowable and the unreachable by the mind ... you for the first time become a creative individual. Nothing destructive can come out of you anymore.

The scholar reads Gautam Buddha, repeats the words correctly, but the seeker finds the source from which this understanding of Gautam Buddha has arisen.

He does not practice it.

Anything practiced is false, pseudo. And you have been told by all your religions to do this, not to do that; you are all carrying ten thousand commandments. But because they have not arisen from your own being, they are just a burden. They don't make you free, they make you Hindus, they make you Mohammedans. They make you Buddhists, they make you Christians, but they don't make you divine beings. They don't give you your godhood; they don't give you your own buddha nature.

Dorin is right when he says,

"THAT IS SO - ANY CHILD OF THREE KNOWS IT,

BUT EVEN A MAN OF EIGHTY CAN'T DO IT."

The question is not knowing the words, the question is knowing the source from where all these roses grow. Going to the very roots, watering and taking care of those roots, the flowers will come in their own season.

But people are topsy-turvy. They start from the roses. Then, naturally, they end up with plastic roses.

Begin with the roots! They are hidden deep in the earth. Your flowers also have roots - unless you go deep inside you, you will not find out how Buddha blossoms like a lotus, how fragrant a mystic becomes ... how in the presence of the awakened person there is a magic, a song without sound, a poetry without words, and a tremendous magnetic force which gives stupid people a wrong idea, as if the awakened person is hypnotizing you.

The awakened person does not do anything, but his very presence is hypnotizing. He does not hypnotize you. You suddenly fall into a deep silence, a peace that you have never known before.

IN AN INCIDENT BETWEEN A MONK AND SEPPO, A MONK ASKED SEPPO, "I HAVE SHAVED MY HEAD, PUT ON BLACK CLOTHES, RECEIVED THE VOWS - WHY AM I NOT TO BE CONSIDERED A BUDDHA?"

This is what I was saying: you can act exactly like Buddha - you can shave your head, you can eat the same food as Buddha, you can walk the way Buddha walks, you can sit in the lotus posture as Buddha sits. But don't think that you have become a buddha; you are just acting in a play.

Every discipline imposed from outside is destructive because it does not allow you to see your ignorance, to see that you have not even made an attempt to enter into your own being. You are satisfied with words? You cannot eat words; they will not nourish you. You have to know on your own; then only there is nourishment.

This poor fellow is asking Seppo, the master, "I HAVE SHAVED MY HEAD, PUT ON BLACK CLOTHES, RECEIVED THE VOWS - WHY AM I NOT TO BE CONSIDERED A BUDDHA?"

SEPPO SAID, "THERE IS NOTHING BETTER THAN AN ABSENCE OF GOODNESS."

This is a very significant statement. A buddha does not know that he is good, that his actions are virtuous. Do you think the cuckoo knows that her song is sweet? Do you think a flower knows that its fragrance is magnificent? A buddha simply is a buddha. He is not even able to say, "I am good."

He has gone beyond good and bad. He is simply an isness.

Is the sky good or bad? To become aware of your own consciousness is to become aware of your inner sky. It is neither good nor bad; it is neither right nor wrong. A buddha is not a saint; that is a misunderstanding - a misunderstanding of the priests. A buddha is far away from any division and duality: the saint and the sinner, the good and the bad, the right and wrong. A buddha is a transcendence. He is a watcher, far away from all our dualities.

Seppo has said it in a really difficult way for scholars or the so-called priests of religions to understand: THERE IS NOTHING BETTER THAN AN ABSENCE OF GOODNESS. Have you ever seen? - the so-called good people are so full of ego. The very idea that "I am good" is dangerous.

A buddha simply knows he is nothing, nobody, a pure cloudless sky. A buddha is not a saint.

All saints are actors. I am saying it unconditionally: All saints are actors. They are trying in every way to behave like a buddha. Sometimes they can even behave better than a buddha because Buddha has not rehearsed and they are rehearsing perfectly, disciplining themselves, for years; they can defeat the real Buddha.

It happened that on the sixtieth birthday of Charlie Chaplin, his friends arranged a competition all over England, so that whoever performed the best as Charlie Chaplin was going to be given a great prize. There were three prizes - first, second and third. From different places, different theaters, different drama companies, people tried. And in the final stage, Charlie Chaplin, being a man of tremendous humor, entered himself into the competition from a faraway village. He believed that he would be the first - "Who can perform better than me?"

But to his surprise, he came second! Somebody managed better than Charlie Chaplin himself.

When it became known to people that they had given the second prize to Charlie Chaplin, they said, "My god - we were celebrating, and what kind of stupidity this is! Why did you enter? It was not supposed to happen that you should enter the competition, and if you had entered at least you should have made us aware. Now it looks so foolish that somebody managed to be more Charlie Chaplin than you are! Be ashamed!"

And this is what has been happening down the ages. Your so-called saints, mahatmas, are just practicing to be buddhas.

But a buddha is not a practice, a buddha is a revelation. It is an inner exploration. And out of that exploration your actions change, your presence changes - not because of any scripture, not because of any other source of wisdom, but just because you are conscious you start acting, working, being, differently.

Guido wrote:

RIGHT IS FINE, WRONG IS FINE -

THERE IS NOTHING TO NIRVANA.

AND WHAT IS "DEFILEMENT"?

SNOWFLAKES IN THE FLAME.

To a buddha even nirvana is nothing. AND WHAT IS "DEFILEMENT"? What is sin? SNOWFLAKES IN THE FLAME.

From that height of consciousness all dualism, all duality disappears. There is only one consciousness pervading the whole universe, and its heartbeat is your own heartbeat.

Rijunkayaku said:

IRON WILL IS DEMANDED OF

THE STUDENT OF THE WAY -

IT IS ALWAYS ON THE MIND.

FORGET ALL - GOOD, AND BAD.

SUDDENLY IT IS YOURS.

If you have to remember continuously what is right and what is wrong and what is good and what is bad ... That's what your religions have been teaching to you. In Mahatma Gandhi's ashram even drinking tea was a sin - not a small sin. And when something becomes a sin, it becomes very sweet.

It becomes almost a challenge. Almost everybody was drinking tea, hiding. And when one man was found red-handed, Gandhi went on a fast!

There are ways of torturing people ... you can torture people the way Adolf Hitler did, you can torture people the way Mahatma Gandhi did. Mahatma Gandhi's way is very subtle and escapes the ordinary mind. Now do you think, if I go on a fast because someone of you has been found smoking or drinking tea ... Although I am torturing myself, I am making you feel guilty and the whole ashram will be harassing you, that "It is because of you!"

And the man was praying, holding Gandhi's feet - "Please forgive me, I will never do such a thing as drinking tea. You come back" ... because the fast was unto death!

In Gandhi's ashram love was abandoned - obviously, where you cannot drink tea, do you think you can love? But his own secretary, Pyarelal, fell in love with a woman ashramite. Gandhi expelled Pyarelal although he was the best secretary that Gandhi ever had in his whole life. But he has committed a great sin, he cannot enter into the ashram gates. Falling in love? He has not done anything, just a romantic idea! Nothing actual or biological has happened, but just the idea ... He had written a love letter and that love letter had been found.

That was enough for the saintly mind to condemn a man of great intelligence and a man of great creative activity. And he said, "I can take that letter back and burn it and I will never look at that woman." But it is impossible to expect compassion from the saints, from the mahatmas. They have created hell.

Bertrand Russell, in his autobiography, denies Christianity saying that, "I am not a Christian for these reasons. And the most important reason is that Christianity says that if you commit sin, adultery, you will be thrown into hell for eternity."

Bertrand Russell was one of the greatest mathematicians of this age. He said, "I can understand ...

I have looked into my whole life. If I expose all my sins that I have committed, and the sins that I have dreamt about, even the hardest judge cannot send me to jail for more than four or five years."

Eternity? You will never be out of hell. Hell has no exit, only an entrance. And the Devil grabs you, gives you a good bone-crushing hug and takes you in. Bertrand Russell's statement was, "I renounce Christianity because it is a stupid idea."

In the first place the things that are thought to be sins, most of them are absolutely innocent. For example falling in love. It is simply a biological phenomenon - nature itself has managed certain chemicals, hormones, which make you fall in love with a certain woman or a certain man. I don't see that there is any sin. And if there is sin in falling in love, then why has God created a man with the capacity to love? He is responsible, ultimately. And if people simply accepted the idea, which they did not, you would not have been here! Your parents were not very religious. That's why you are here, because they were a little irreligious.

It is said that after making the world, God went around asking Babylonians, Egyptians and others, "Do you want a commandment?"

And they all asked, "What is the commandment?"

He said, "You should not commit adultery."

And the Babylonians said, "Then what else should we do? Take your commandment with yourself; find somebody else."

And finally he ended up with Moses. Just being a Jew, Moses asked the wrong question. Everybody else asked, "What is the commandment? Because before we accept it we must at least know what we are accepting."

When God said, "Do you want to have a commandment?" Moses said, "How much?"

God said, "It is free!"

Moses said, "Then I will have ten." If it is free, then a Jew ... Those ten commandments have been torturing the Jews for four thousand years.

IRON WILL IS DEMANDED OF

THE STUDENT OF THE WAY -

IT IS ALWAYS ON THE MIND.

FORGET ALL - GOOD, AND BAD.

SUDDENLY IT IS YOURS.

The truth, nature, your very destiny, suddenly is fulfilled. But don't divide. Before you have attained your being, there is no right for you to decide what is right and what is wrong.

Question 1:

Maneesha has asked:

It is. Morality is only for mediocre people. Morality is a strategy of the priest to exploit the masses.

And it differs from place to place. What is moral to a Hindu may not be moral to a Christian, what is moral to a Christian may not be moral to a Jaina.

A Jaina saint was asking me, "Do you consider Jesus in the same category as Mahavira? Because he used to eat meat, drink wine - how can you say that he was a saint, or even a good man?"

But the Christian would ask, "How many orphanages did Mahavira open? How many poor people did he manage to help survive? How many schools for the aboriginals did he open? What kind of goodness, what kind of morality did he have? Standing naked, that's all that he did!"

For the Christian, Mahavira cannot be considered a saint. For the Jainas, Mohammed cannot be considered to be a saint - he had sixteen wives! Now this is not right for a gentleman, what to say about a saint. Only Hindus will be a little less disturbed, because Krishna had sixteen thousand wives; Mohammed is just a poor fellow.

And Mohammed at least married those sixteen women. Krishna had married only one woman; the rest were other people's wives. Whoever he found to be beautiful, his soldiers would force her into his palace. He never considered whether they had children, a husband, old parents to look after - it did not matter. Anything that he liked ... And Hindus say that he is the perfect incarnation of God. Of course he must be perfect, because I don't think anybody else can defeat him. People have tried. The Nizam of Hyderabad, just forty years ago when he died, had five hundred wives. But five hundred is not much compared to sixteen thousand.

Who is going to decide what is moral and what is immoral? The Bird's Way does not divide into morality and immorality, into goodness and badness. It simply says that the decisive factor is your awareness: if your awareness acts in a certain way, that is moral for you; it does not matter what others say. You should be satisfied that you are acting out of awareness. Then whatever you do is right - right for you. But if you are unconscious, as people are, and go on doing things which others are doing, copying, imitating ... They may become saints, but deep down they are simply actors.

They may do good, but their goodness is just a practice. Not their awareness, not their intrinsic being, blossoming into their acts.

The Birds' Way is beyond good, beyond bad. And the way of Buddha is the Way of the Birds. It does not leave any footprints behind. Every bird is free in the sky to move in any direction. No bird leaves any footprints for other birds. It is only the human beings who write scriptures for others to follow. They not only become decisive for themselves, they become slave-creators. Everybody has to follow them; they don't want you to be conscious of what you are doing. They want you to do it because they have decided what is right.

But remember, in every disease the same medicine will not do. And in every time, in every age, the same criterion will not do. And with every individual, other than his own consciousness there is no criterion. Nobody can decide for anybody else.

This is simply the meaning of freedom. The Bird's Way is the way of freedom. It is the individual as the ultimate value.

Before we enter into our daily meditation, just to take away your seriousness ... and the bamboos are waiting so silently for your laughter.

Nurse Ratchett notices a mental patient with his ear close to the wall, listening intently.

As she approaches, the looney holds up a warning finger and says, "SHHHH! Be quiet!" Then he beckons Nurse Ratchett to come closer. "Listen here," says the mad guy, pointing to a spot on the wall.

Ratchett listens for some time and then says, "I can't hear anything."

"I know," says the patient, "and it has been like this all day!"

Paddy decides to go and visit his old friend, Fergus MacDuffy, who owns a pub in the woods called The Old Log Inn. But when Paddy arrives, Fergus is shocked to see that he has been beaten up.

His eyes are swollen and he has a bloody nose and mouth. "My god!" cries Fergus, "what happened to you?"

"Well," replies Paddy, "on my way here I got lost in the woods, I did not know where I was going.

Then I saw a couple making love under a tree. So I went over to them, and all I asked was, 'How far is The Old Log Inn?'" Chuck Farley goes out carousing and gambling all night. He drinks a few too many bottles of rum and simply never makes it home. At dawn the next morning, Chuck is aching with a hangover and has no idea where he is or how he got there. He looks over at a man and a woman sleeping in his bed. The woman looks something like his wife and he wonders how he is going to get out of this.

Finally, after stumbling out of the building exhausted, he hits upon an idea and grabs a nearby pay phone. When his wife answers, Chuck shouts, "Don't pay the ransom, honey. I have escaped!"

(THERE IS A BLANK SILENCE WHILE EVERYBODY TRIES TO WORK THIS ONE OUT. THEN A ROAR OF LAUGHTER AS OSHO CHUCKLES ...) You have missed. You missed it!

Okay, we will try another. But you have to get it no matter what.

Dr. Bones is doing his monthly turn at the Infant Welfare Clinic. It has been a very busy day and Bones has just about had enough. A woman with a baby is next in line and she is shown into the doctor's office by the nurse in charge.

Bones examines the baby, and then asks the woman, "Is he breast-fed or bottle-fed?"

"Breast-fed," she replies.

"Strip down to the waist," orders Bones. She does, and he examines her. He presses each breast, increasing and decreasing pressure. He squeezes and pulls each nipple. Suddenly he remarks, "No wonder this child is so thin - you don't have any milk!"

"Naturally," she replies. "I am his aunt! But I am glad I came!"

Now ... Nivedano, give the first beat and everybody goes absolutely crazy.

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

(Drumbeat)

Become silent. Close your eyes.

No movement, as if you are just a stone statue.

Now, go in ... deeper and deeper.

Fearlessly, penetrate like an arrow, to the very center of your being.

This is the search for the roots.

The roses will come on their own accord.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Everybody falls dead.

Don't be afraid, this is just to make your whole life energy centered within.

The body goes on breathing.

Relaxed as if you are dead, you can experience your life's source more clearly in this context.

In this moment, you ARE the buddha.

To be a buddha is not a question of good and bad.

To be a buddha is simply to be.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back, all the buddhas.

Don't forget the experience.

Sit like a buddha, silent, utterly fulfilled.

Blessed is this experience and blessed is the moment. Let this peace continue.

Whatever you do does not matter if underneath, this silence goes on moving like a river.

Your consciousness is a river from eternity to eternity.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate ... so many buddhas together under one roof?

Yes!