Kwatz!

Maneesha, before I answer and discuss the profound sutra you have placed before me, I have to deal with something urgent, but non-essential. Tomorrow will be too late, so I have to deal with it today.

I used to think that idiots don't grow, they always remain idiots. Today I found that they do grow - they become more idiotic. The whole credit goes to that old goat of Puri, the Shankaracharya. For almost two weeks he had been insisting that no untouchable, no sudra can enter into the temple of Nath Dwara. It will destroy the purity of thousands of years; no sudra has ever entered it.

He has even challenged me to a discussion on the point; and he has asserted in a press conference that he is ready to be arrested, but he won't allow any untouchable to enter the temple of Nath Dwara. But in these ten days, from every nook and corner of the country, he has been bombarded.

He was hoping at least that the orthodox will support him, but they have remained silent.

No intelligent man can support him. Seeing that the situation is getting out of hand, today he has made a statement, that "I have been misrepresented."

Hundreds of newspapers in all the thirty languages of this country for ten days continuously have been misrepresenting him and he has been silent. Now he has come with a new statement and the statement is, "I never said that harijans, the untouchables, cannot enter Nath Dwara. I said they do not need to enter Nath Dwara; they are God's people" - the word 'harijan' means God's people - "and they don't have to go to any temple, God will come to them himself."

In the first place no Hindu scripture calls them harijans, they are called sudras, untouchables. The word 'harijan' was invented by Mahatma Gandhi for his own politics. Sometimes just by changing a name a great consolation comes. He started calling the sudras God's own people, but nothing changed. And it is very strange that God's own people should always suffer and the others, who are not God's own people, should enjoy richness, respectability and all the advantages that are available.

But harijans were happy to lose their name 'untouchable'. It means that they are so dirty that they cannot even be touched, not even their shadow can be touched. If you touch their shadow, you will have to go through a purification process, you will have to call brahmins, you will have to take a bath in the Ganges, you will have to be surrounded by priests chanting mantras, and only then will you be back again to your own caste; otherwise you have fallen, you have touched the shadow of a sudra.

But with the changing of their name to harijans, God's own people, sudras felt very good, very consoled. This is how the politicians and the priests work. In reality nothing changes, just the label.

But now it makes them feel that they ARE God's own people.

This Shankaracharya of Puri is saying something which is even more stupid than his earlier statement that he will prevent harijans from entering Nath Dwara. Now he is saying, "They are God's own people, God will come to them."

I want to ask him - what about others? What about himself? Why are others going to the temples?

Nobody should go. At least the temple of Puri should be closed to the Shankaracharya. If God is going to come to people of his own choice, then the brahmins - who have been the people of his choice for thousands of years - should not go to the temples. In fact nobody should go. I agree perfectly, there is no need. These temples should be changed into schools, into hospitals, into anything utilitarian. They have accumulated most of the money of the country, and it should be used for schools and colleges.

Now he will be in more difficulty. If God comes to meet his own people, the Shankaracharya has saved himself from his previous statement but he has put himself into a more difficult and complex position. Now all the Hindus other than sudras should ask him, "What about us? Is God going to meet us outside of the temple or in the temple? If he meets the harijans - who have been for thousands of years condemned - outside of the temple, then why should we go to the temple?"

Then in fact the very necessity for temples is no longer there. God has to be met outside under the trees, under the stars.

Up to now the Shankaracharya was against harijans, and he is still against them. He thinks he is being a great politician by saying that they need not go to the temples. But I want to create more difficulty for him. All the remaining Hindus should ask him, "What about us - you are putting us lower than the sudras. What about yourself? Why do you go to the temple? And what is the need of all your scriptures?"

Just meet God outside in the open air, by the sea, by the side of the river, anywhere. Wherever you remember him, he will be there. If he can come to meet the untouchables ... you are touchables, he can even touch you.

Because of this I have had to change my standpoint. I used to think that retarded people never grow.

They grow. They become more retarded! The Shankaracharya is a living example. Now he has to tell the whole country what the status is of temples and scriptures and what need there is of worship, yagnas, statues, and what need there is of caste. If sudras are people of God, then others also are people of God; or do you want to say that only harijans are people of God and others are not even cousin-brothers to harijans?

This fellow should be put right. He is getting more and more senile, he needs to be hospitalized. And if nobody allows him, I am ready to allow him here and we will give him a good round of therapies and cleanse him of all this nonsense that he has been carrying. There is no need for him to be arrested and become a martyr, he is simply sick!

But he will not realize it. He will have to be forced to realize that he is suffering from psychological illness. He should renounce the post of Shankaracharya and just get entered into a madhouse, where he will find very similar souls, speaking the same language - which nobody understands.

One of my friends, Narendra's father, had a strange illness. Six months of the year he used to be mad and the remaining six months he was absolutely sane. Whenever he was sane he was ill, with always this problem and that problem and a headache and a stomachache, and he looked very sad.

But whenever he became mad he was perfectly healthy, no sign of any sickness.

Once when he was perfectly mad and healthy he escaped from the house. He was caught by the police in Agra, where the Taj Mahal is, because of a very strange linguistic problem. He entered a sweet shop. There is a sweet which is called khaja. But 'khaja' also means, 'eat it'. He asked the shopkeeper what it was, and the shopkeeper said "khaja" so he started eating it.

The man said, "Are you mad?"

He said, "You must be mad, you told me 'khaja'."

A crowd gathered and the police came and he was brought to the magistrate and the magistrate was also at a loss, because the poor fellow was not wrong - why did they make such names for sweets? He was simply following what the shopkeeper said.

But by asking other questions he figured out that he was mad. He was sentenced to the madhouse for six months. But they did not know his psychological history, that three months of his madness were over and after three months he would become sane on his own. There was no problem, it was simply a swing from madness to sanity, from sanity to madness. His whole life he had been on the swing.

So in the madhouse the first three months were perfect. He enjoyed himself with all the mad people, he loved the place. But in his madness he drank something that was brought to clean the toilets.

He drank the whole bottle. He suffered for days from diarrhea and vomiting. But because of this diarrhea and vomiting, within fifteen days he became sane. All heat went out of him; he became completely calm and quiet.

And then he became afraid, surrounded by all the mad people - somebody was pulling his hair, somebody was trying to put a finger into his ear, somebody was sitting on his shoulders. It had all been good up to that point, but now he tried hard to convince the superintendent that, "I am no longer mad."

The superintendent said, "Don't bother me, every madman says that. That is no argument! You will have to remain here until you fulfill your sentence of six months."

He said, "In three months these mad people and you will kill me! It was good before, immensely good, I was enjoying it. Why did you bring this bottle here?"

But he had to suffer, law is law. When he came out I asked him, "Uncle, how have things been?"

He was very friendly to everybody, and except for his family everybody enjoyed him. The family was suffering, because he was stealing things and distributing them to the beggars, borrowing money from anywhere and the family had to pay it, purchasing anything that he wanted.

He was a great shopper, all kinds of junk, it did not matter what it was. Just if it was cheap, he would purchase it.

So the family was in difficulty. I remember Narendra was so small, but these small children used to watch him and shout to their mother, "He is trying to take something away, he is trying to open the locker." Everybody was on watch.

He said to me, "Everything was so good for three months. I enjoyed it, I had found my people. But when I became sane, I found that these were not my people."

I hope that the Shankaracharya of Puri, in any madhouse, will find his friends with similar ideas. He will enjoy it. It is not going to be a suffering or a punishment, it will be a promotion. And to leave him out in this insane condition is harmful to society. For the sake of society he should be forced into a psychiatric clinic.

I never thought that after ten days he would start lying. Now he says he never made any such statements and thousands of newspapers all over India have been misrepresenting him. If one paper had done it one could believe it, but these thousands of papers cannot be in a conspiracy. And they are all owned by high-caste Hindus - they were ashamed that he was making such statements.

The untouchables have been kept out of the temples; there is no need to make statements, no need to make any fuss about it. In fact they themselves don't go. Other politicians are trying to persuade them to enter into the temples, but they know that they will be beaten, they know that their houses will be burned, they know that their women will be raped. They know perfectly well that the police will stand there in favor of the richer high-class Hindus, and nobody is going to protect them. But politicians use human beings just like things, commodities.

The politicians who are trying to get them to enter the temple, their whole object is to have their vote, temple or no temple. They want the harijans to be rejected from the temple so that they can sympathize with them, "We have made every effort for you, we risked our lives; now at least give us your votes."

And the Shankaracharya was defending the higher class Hindus, who are three times more numerous than the sudras. His interest is also in votes. Just two days ago he said, "Perhaps I will have to enter into politics." It is better that he enters. At least this mask of a religious saint will drop and he will be just an ordinary gutter politician. It will be a great day of celebration - at least we will celebrate. He should drop his Shankaracharyahood and run for election. But he should not lie to people or make such stupid statements.

Everybody is as divine as everybody else. There cannot be any distinction. Anybody who makes a distinction is the enemy of the people.

Maneesha has brought a beautiful, very significant dialogue:

HOFUKU SAID, "THERE IS A MAN NOW PASSING BEHIND THE BUDDHA HALL, AND HE KNOWS THIS IS TOM, THIS IS DICK, OR THIS IS HARRY."

Strangely enough, when I entered I found three women, not three men, just walking behind the Buddha Hall. But times have changed. And it does not matter who was walking, the question can still be asked.

"AND THERE IS A MAN PASSING BEFORE THE BUDDHA HALL. SOMEHOW OR OTHER HE SEES NOTHING AND NOBODY. TELL ME, WHERE IS THE PROFIT AND LOSS OF BUDDHISM?"

He is asking, in other words, to make it simple: "These persons I see behind the Buddha Hall, the person I see in front - they seem to be almost frozen statues. They must be in meditation. They don't see anything, they don't bother about anything." This man Hofuku, the master of the temple, is asking, "WHERE IS THE PROFIT AND LOSS OF BUDDHISM if people become so careless that you pass in front of them and they don't even look at you - as if nobody has passed? They are so self-centered that the whole world outside has disappeared. Then what is the point of Buddhism?

Is this a loss or a profit?"

A MONK SAID, "BECAUSE HE DISTINGUISHES THINGS BADLY, IT MEANS HE CAN'T SEE."

HOFUKU SAID, "KWATZ!" to the monk who was giving this answer - because he divides things into good and bad, into black and white, into dead and alive. He cannot see what those persons are doing.

Hofuku shouted the Zen KWATZ! which is equivalent to the stick hitting your head. Because the master cannot always carry the stick, they found an equivalent. And certainly when a Zen monk or master shouts "Kwatz!" it hits harder than any stick can. It keeps you utterly silent - "What happened? Why has he started shouting in a strange way, a sound which means nothing?" But it can wake you. Any sound, meaningless or meaningful, can wake you up.

The Zen experience is that certain sounds reach into certain centers of your being. That is the experience of all the mystics of the world. For example, Sufis have found the sound HOO. If you repeat "Hoo" continuously, you will find that the center of your life, just two inches below your navel, is hit again and again. Soon there will be sparks coming out of your life center.

In this country, they have found OM - which is mild, in accordance with the character of the people who have lived in this country. It does not hit very hard, but it pushes. "Om, Om," again and again - it pushes you into a different space that is not mind.

Zen has found KWATZ - it is like their character, their training, their samuraihood. They are warriors.

"Kwatz!" - it hits exactly the same center as "Hoo." When you greet each other with "Yaa-Hoo," you are hitting the same center.

HOFUKU SAID, "IF THIS IS THE BUDDHA HALL, HE CAN'T SEE."

THE MONK SAID, "IF IT WASN'T THE BUDDHA HALL, HE COULD SEE ALL RIGHT!"

HOFUKU SAID, "IT IS JUST BECAUSE OF THE BUDDHA HALL THAT HE CAN SEE ANYTHING."

Now in the language of Zen, anything and nothing are equivalent. To see nothing is to see all because nothing is the very source of all. The question is about the Buddha Hall. The monk is saying that if these people were not in the Buddha Hall, they could see everything. You all see everything outside the Buddha Hall, but in the Buddha Hall, you stop seeing all kinds of stupid things. You become almost blind to the world. Your eyes turn inwards. You start seeing only your own being as if nothing else exists.

HOFUKU SAID, "IT IS JUST BECAUSE OF THE BUDDHA HALL THAT HE CAN SEE ANYTHING."

A very illogical dialogue, but if you understand, I have made it absolutely logical. Sitting like a buddha, you stop seeing the whole world because you start seeing your inner being. And running around seeing things, you forget all about yourself.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, A MONK SAID TO BOKUSHU, "I BEG YOU TO EXPOUND TO ME THE GREAT MEANING OF BUDDHISM."

BOKUSHU SAID, "YOU BRING IT TO ME, AND I'LL EXPOUND IT."

These were great masters. You cannot drag them into intellectual thinking; you cannot drag them down from their hilltops, from their watching silence. He says, "You bring it to me. You want to understand Buddhism? Just bring it here." Now, nobody can bring Buddhism, it is not a thing. "Bring it to me and I will expound it. And if you cannot bring it, I am sorry."

The monk said, "Please, don't ask such an impossible thing. Just tell me the meaning of Buddhism."

BOKUSHU SAID, "WHEN WE BREAK THE EASTERN HEDGE, WE MUST MEND THE WESTERN FENCE."

By saying this, he is saying, "A dialogue between me and you is almost impossible. It is like a man whose eastern hedge is broken and he starts mending the western fence. He is an idiot. You are doing the same. The only way I can expound Buddhism is if you bring it to me."

How can one bring Buddhism? If one comes in silence and stillness and sits by the side of the master without even asking, just waiting in deep trust and love, the very presence of the master will become a great sermon.

Zen is not a theorization, it is not some philosophy. It is a very real experience, almost tangible, but you have to understand its way. If you are open, silent, the master will pour all that he has. But in words you can get lost, you will not understand the essence of being a buddha.

The only way is to be.

A MONK ASKED JOSHU, "WHAT IS THIS EYE OF THE ONE WHO NEVER SLEEPS?"

It reminds me of a night twenty-five centuries ago ....

When Gautam Buddha was alive, he used to always sleep in the same posture; and the whole night, he would not move from side to side, he would not change his posture, not even an inch. Just nearby, in the Ajanta caves, in the last cave there is a sculpture of Gautam Buddha sleeping. That pose has become known as the 'Lion's pose' because the lion also sleeps on its side without moving.

Ananda was very much troubled because every night he could see - sometimes in the middle of the night he would wake up - that Buddha was absolutely still, just as he had always been. One night, he could not resist the temptation.

He said, "It is not good to disturb you in the night, because the whole day you have been walking and teaching, but I cannot resist. For twenty years I have been watching. You can understand how long I have waited, but now I have to ask it anyway. How do you manage to remain in the same posture that you go to sleep in, the same posture for the whole night? Do you sleep or do you simply go on keeping the posture? - because I have to move continuously."

Gautam Buddha said, "I have found the right posture. Now there is no need to change it. And I am as awake as anyone, even while my body is asleep. I have found the right posture for the body ...

you are still searching for it. It is not simply a question of tossing and turning the body, it is because your mind is tossing and turning. I have gone beyond - there is no mind. The body simply lies down like a corpse. Have you ever seen any corpse changing its posture?"

In one story a woman reached to the Pearly Gates. And as Saint Peter opened the door, she asked immediately about her husband, "Where is Tom?"

Saint Peter said, "Dear lady, there must be millions of Toms. You will have to describe him to me in detail. Just tell me something about which Tom, and I will try my best to find him."

She said, "I don't know how to describe him. Only one thing I remember is that when he died, before dying he said, 'Remember not to be unfaithful to me because if you are, I will toss and turn in my grave.'" Saint Peter said, "Aha, don't be worried. He is a well-known figure here. We call him Whirling Tom.

I will find him for you. Somewhere he must be whirling."

It is your mind. Once your mind is at rest, once it disappears, your body can remain asleep but your inner eye, your inner sensitivity, your awareness, can remain burning like a small flame - not only watching your body, but also watching the silent mind, and the stillness surrounding you.

The enlightened man cannot sleep in the same way that the unenlightened one sleeps. When the unenlightened man sleeps, he is simply unconscious. The enlightened man sleeps but he is not unconscious.

JOSHU SAID, "THE PHYSICAL EYE OF THE ORDINARY MAN." HE ADDED, "THOUGH HE MAY BE SAID NOT YET TO HAVE THE SPIRITUAL EYE, THE PHYSICAL EYE MAY BE CONSIDERED TO BE THE SAME THING."

The question is that if your mind is silent then even your physical eyes stop moving. You can try it as an experiment. This is the way that psychoanalysts find out whether a sleeping person is dreaming or not. And now, there is much research going on about dreams and dreamless sleep. It has completely overturned the ancient idea. The old idea was that there are a few dreams once in a while, mostly early in the morning when you are going to wake up; otherwise, you sleep soundly.

Modern research says that you dream six hours out of eight. If you sleep eight hours, then for six hours you dream. Those two hours of dreamless sleep are also not solid, but broken here and there - ten minutes here, fifteen minutes there. But this proportion had never been mentioned anywhere in the world before.

And the second revolutionary discovery which has come out of it is that when you are watching somebody sleeping, you can know the type of sleep just by looking at his eyes. They are closed, but if he is dreaming, then you can see that under the eyelids, the eyes are moving. That movement is absolutely clear. It is just like when you read, you have to move your eyes; when you see a film, you have to move your eyes. Dreaming is a kind of film running on the screen of your mind, and the eyes have to move with it.

The traditional wisdom was that if you don't dream very much, it is a sign of health. The modern researchers have found just the opposite - of course this research is done with ordinary people, not those who are meditating, otherwise the results would be different. They have found that dreaming is a way of throwing away all the dust that people have gathered during the day. If they don't dream they will go mad, because every day the dust will go on collecting. Soon they will be surrounded by dust, thick layers of thought, incomplete experiences, all kinds of junk, and they will not be able to find the way out and come back home. Every day, just as you take a bath or clean your teeth, your mind automatically tries to throw away all kinds of dust that has gathered during the day. This needs six hours, so the healthy man dreams six hours and sleeps two hours.

That brings many implications. The researchers have been experimenting with a few people in one lab, and a few people in another lab .... In one lab they try to disturb the people whenever they start dreaming. Whenever they see that their eyes are moving, they wake them up. In the other lab, they wake them up whenever their eyes are not moving. In one lab they disturb their sleep, and in the other they disturb their dreams. And the strange result is that the people whose sleep is disturbed and whose dreams are allowed, wake up profoundly refreshed without any trouble. And the people whose dreams are disturbed and whose sleep is allowed, wake up utterly tired, tattered. It seems that dreams are more significant than sleep. But this research is only confined to non-meditators.

A meditator throws away all the dust himself, he does not wait for the biological sleep to throw it away. He throws it away consciously and with full awareness. Then his sleep becomes a deep silence and also a deep awareness. This awareness has been called the third eye, but the third eye is only a symbol.

What we are doing here every day in meditation ... within two minutes you are throwing away almost six hours' load. It is a question of totality. Don't hold back, don't think of what people will think about you. Here, there is nobody even listening to you. Everybody is so much involved in himself and everybody is competing with everybody else! This throwing away gibberish will reduce your dreams, and if you were brought to be examined for your sleep, the results would be different. Your dreams would be far less and your sleep would be longer.

And a new factor will have arisen in you: a thin line of awareness, which as you go on growing in meditation becomes bigger and bigger. A point comes in that fire of your awareness where all your dreams burn, and only sleep is left. The body sleeps, it is tired - it needs rest. But your consciousness is never tired. It burns bright, day in, day out.

THE MONK ASKED, "WHAT IS THE EYE OF THE ONE WHO SLEEPS?"

JOSHU SAID, "THE BUDDHA EYE; THE EYE OF THE LAW IS THE EYE OF HIM WHO SLEEPS."

In fact, your sleep is as insane as your waking. Just consider for a moment: is your waking sane?

Are not insane thoughts moving inside you - anger and greed and hate and possessiveness? And thousands are the names of all the kinds of madnesses that are going on inside you, although you are trying to hide them. You are wearing a mask; just as you are hiding your body with clothes, you are hiding your mind with smiles, with thoughts, talking with people. Your conversations are nothing but distractions, distractions of your insane mind.

I traveled in this country for almost twenty years. And it was an experience, because I traveled only in the air-conditioned coupe, so once in a while there was another passenger but otherwise I was alone. The other person would usually try to make some conversation immediately ... and I had a beautiful opportunity. I would tell him my name, my father's name, my father's father's name, how many brothers my father has, how many children my uncles have. And he would be amazed because he had simply asked me my name.

I would say, "You were going to ask all these things. I am settling everything right now, so we can be silent. Twenty-four hours we are going to be together ..."

The man would look at me a little strangely, but I would close my eyes. Once in a while, I would open them and see what he was doing.

These travelings have been my labs with thousands of people. I have not missed a single moment of watching and seeing what is happening. The man will read the same newspaper again and again and will start getting angry - angry at me, but he cannot say it, because I have told him, "Don't say a single word. All inquiry is finished. I have told you everything about me; more than that, I don't know either."

He will open his suitcase and close his suitcase, open the window and close the window. And I am watching. And in an air-conditioned compartment, he will start perspiring, he will call the conductor, "Can you change my place to some other compartment? Because I am going to go mad."

The conductor said, "I don't see what is bothering you."

He said, "That is the problem! Nobody is bothering me. This fellow is simply sitting and looking at me as if I am an experimental zoo. And I am behaving insanely, I know. But because of him I have to do something, otherwise ... And he has closed the conversation from the very beginning. No conversation! So I am reading the same newspaper and getting angry. I open the suitcase and I know there is no need to open it; I put my clothes this way and that way but what is the point? I go unnecessarily to the bathroom and then I look stupid ... 'This is strange, you don't have anything to do in the bathroom. Why are you going?'" Almost all the conductors knew me because in twenty years' traveling every driver, every conductor, every stationmaster ... The conductor would say, "When will you stop being mischievous? That poor fellow is going mad and I knew from the very beginning that this was going to happen."

One night I was leaving Bombay. Nearabout fifty friends had come to see me off. In one compartment there was a Mohammedan, and in another compartment - because in Indian trains there is only one long car which is air-conditioned, divided into small cabins - in another cabin, there was a brahmin. You can tell these people by their appearance. The brahmin was declaring it on his forehead, the Mohammedan with his cap.

The conductor asked me, "With whom would you like to travel? One is Mohammedan, one is a brahmin. Other compartments are full."

I said, "The brahmin will be more hilarious."

He said, "You never get tired of traveling and I know now that this brahmin is going to be in trouble."

And as I went in, the brahmin, just as the brahmins do, lay down on the floor and touched my feet, thinking that I am a great mahatma because fifty people had come to send me off and they had touched my feet and garlanded me.

I said, "What are you doing? I am a Mohammedan." And he stood up and he said, "If you are a Mohammedan, then why did you not say so before? You have spoiled my whole night. Now I have to take a bath in the cold night. Don't you consider ...?"

I said, "What can I do? I entered, I had not even a chance to say a word and you touched my feet.

Obviously, you have to take a bath."

So he went to take a bath in the cold night, but when he came back he said, "Are you really a Mohammedan?"

I said, "I was just joking."

"What do you mean, joking? And the water ... it was ice cold."

I said, "I thought you would understand the joke."

He said, "This is not right. I was certain that you are not a Mohammedan. But when you said you were, there was no question of not believing it." He touched my feet again and said, "Forgive me."

I said, "You will have to take another bath."

He said, "What? What happened?"

I said, "Really, I am a Mohammedan. Can't you see my beard?" He looked at me and he thought about again having a bath. He called the conductor immediately and he said, "Can you find a place somewhere else?"

The conductor said, "What is wrong? Are you in some trouble?" He said, "Some trouble? I have to twice take cold baths in the middle of the night. And now I cannot sleep because I cannot convince myself that this fellow is Mohammedan. He is not."

The conductor said, "As far as I know, he is not."

He said, "You are a very good man; you saved me ... but he was torturing me."

I said, "I was simply testing whether you are a real brahmin or not."

He said, "That is the way of the great saints." He touched my feet again.

And the conductor said, "What are you doing?" - because he knew me - "he is a Mohammedan.

And a brahmin touching the feet of a Mohammedan? You will go direct to hell."

He said, "Rather than going to hell, I will go direct to the bathroom again."

But this is the world - unconscious people.

Joshu's statement is that the inner eye is THE BUDDHA EYE, THE EYE OF THE LAW ... the law according to which the whole universe runs.

AND ONCE A MONK ASKED TENDO, "WHAT IS THE EYE THAT LACKS NOTHING IN ITS PRACTICAL APPLICATION TO LIFE?"

TENDO ANSWERED, "IT IS JUST LIKE BLINDNESS."

The man who has known himself becomes almost blind to all distinctions, discriminations, divisions, dualities. He becomes almost blind to all the things that you see and live and behave according to. But his blindness is far more important than your eyes. To be a buddha and blind is far more significant than to have eyes and not to be aware of oneself.

For centuries, there has been a discussion about whether the eyes should be open or closed on a statue of Buddha. The discussion became so hot that finally they decided, "Let his eyes be half open and half closed." Everybody was satisfied.

I was in a Buddhist temple, having a meditation camp there, exactly where Gautam Buddha became enlightened in Bodhgaya. I said to the priest, "This is not possible. Buddha must have been blinking his eyes. He cannot keep them always half open and half closed. It is possible to keep them closed, but it is not possible to keep them half open or half closed."

The priest said, "Nobody has ever asked about it. And for centuries we have decided, because of conflicting groups ..."

Another sect, born side by side with Buddhism, is Jainism. There is the same problem, whether Mahavira's eyes should be closed or open. On this stupid question, Jainas have become divided into two sects: one that keeps Mahavira's eyes open, one that keeps Mahavira's eyes closed.

At a Jaina conference I said to them, "Now electricity is available. You can make the eyes blink. That will be truer to life."

And they said, "You are joking about Mahavira too!"

I said, "I am simply suggesting an idea to keep closer to reality. Mahavira was not blind, nor could he have managed to keep his eyes open completely, twenty-four hours. Up to now it was okay that you managed to divide into two sects, but now there is no need. Just connect the statue with electricity and Mahavira will go on blinking, twenty-four hours a day; and that will be joyous also, to look at Mahavira blinking. And sometimes to make it hilarious, you can make one eye blink."

Religion should be a joy. It is stupid, making Mahavira blind. And the other party is doing the other stupidity, keeping his eyes open continuously.

The problem is with our unconsciousness; we decide things and we also decide things about the people who are enlightened, but we don't have any right to. We are going to make mistakes in making any judgment about the enlightened ones, because we cannot see that far, that deep, that high; we are creeping on the earth, we cannot see the eagle far away in the sky.

The people who have lived inwards have entered into a different world, to which you are blind. And naturally they have become blind to you, because they don't see your world as being any longer significant. They have found a more authentic life, a more beautiful existence.

This inner clarity, this seeing into oneself, is called the third eye, or the Buddha Eye. When you look inwards in your meditations, remember just one thing: your interiority. Forget everything else as if it was all dream, and you have entered into a different area of existence where dreams cannot follow you.

A Zen poem:

THE WIND DROPS

BUT THE FLOWERS STILL FALL;

A BIRD SINGS

AND THE MOUNTAIN HOLDS

YET MORE MYSTERY.

It is not that a man of inwardness becomes blind to the beauty of a bird on the wing, or the mystery of the mountains, or the flowers falling; he simply becomes blind to all that is nonsensical in our minds.

He becomes blind to our jealousies; he does not know what it is, he has forgotten that language.

He does not know what greed is, he has forgotten that language. He has forgotten your ordinary mind completely. He has entered into no-mind, into universal mind. There, another law - more fundamental than any law that we have created in our courts - prevails.

Basho has written this:

THE CHESTNUT BY THE EAVES

IN MAGNIFICENT BLOOM

PASSES UNNOTICED

BY MEN OF THIS WORLD.

You think you have eyes, but you may not have looked even at your wife accurately. You may have lived with her and you may never have looked into her eyes. People live together but remain strangers, keeping a little distance always, fearful of being dominated by the other.

The flowers and the stars ... they come every day, every night, but how many people see the sunset and the immense beauty and color that the sunset spreads on the horizon?

The roses may be blossoming in your own garden, but you don't have time. You are reading a third- rate yellow newspaper, you are reading about politicians and all the nonsense that they go on doing to humanity. But you will not look, you don't have time. You will not look at the night when all the stars arrive, your vision is very small.

The man of the inner eye not only becomes aware of the inner mysteries, he also becomes aware of the mysteries that are just around him everywhere. A buddha, one who is awakened, is awakened to truth, to beauty, to goodness.

His riches are great.

Nan-O-Myo has written:

NOT FALLING, NOT IGNORING -

A PAIR OF MANDARIN DUCKS

ALIGHTING, BOBBING, ANYWHERE.

Zen is in its very essence a great poetic, aesthetic sensibility. It gives you more aliveness, it gives you and your senses their maximum. A man of Zen lives at the optimum - one cannot live more than he lives. Each breath is total in itself and each moment is so full of blessings, of ecstasies, of a great love, not directed to anybody but simply spread like the fragrance of flowers. Whoever is ready to receive it can have it. But whoever wants to grab onto it will lose it.

Question 1:

Maneesha's question is:

It is much more, Maneesha. It is certainly a bird's-eye view, but it is much more. The bird can see; his vision is far bigger than yours because he is at a higher altitude. But the man of awareness is not only at a higher altitude, he is also at a deeper interiority. A bird cannot become a buddha. It is man's right, only man's right, to become a buddha.

Man is evolution's highest peak, but don't stop at it. One step more and you will have stepped on the Everest of being.

Before we go deeper into ourselves - a few intimate laughs, just to clean the air and to make you more light, weightless, less serious.

A Russian, a Cuban, a Catholic priest and Swami Deva Coconut are on a train traveling across Europe. The Russian takes out a large bottle of vodka. He pours each of his companions a drink, and then throws the half-full bottle out of the window. "Why did you do that?" asks Swami Coconut.

"There is so much vodka in my country," replies the Russian. "We have more than we can ever use."

A little later, the Cuban passes around a box of Cuban cigars. Everyone takes one, then he throws the rest of the box out of the window.

"My god!" says Coconut. "Why did you do that?"

"Cigars," replies the Cuban, "are a dime a dozen in my country. We have more of them than we know what to do with!"

Coconut sits in silence for a moment. Then he gets up, grabs the Catholic priest and throws him out of the window.

Little Melvin, little Billy and little Dings-bums are bored, sitting around together outside the drugstore.

Suddenly, little Melvin finds a twenty-dollar bill on the ground and says, "Hey, look! Let's go in and change it and then each of us can buy something really far out!"

They go in and change the money, divide it up and disappear into the store to spend it. Half an hour later, they meet again outside.

"What did you get?" Melvin asks Billy.

"I got this super basketball, so we can all play basketball like those guys on TV," says Billy. "What did you get?"

"Wow, man," says Melvin, "just like I saw on the TV, I got this skateboard so we can skate all over the place."

Then they turn to Dings-bums. "What did you get?"

Dings-bums pulls out a box from his bag and says, "A box of tampons."

Melvin and Billy look puzzled. Finally, little Melvin asks, "What the hell did you get that for?"

"Well," says Dings-bums, "they say on television, that with these tampons you can do all kinds of things - like running, horse-riding, and swimming!"

Now, Nivedano, everybody goes absolutely crazy ...

(Drumbeat)

(Gibberish)

(Drumbeat)

Be silent, close your eyes, no movement of the body.

Forget the world outside. Just be in.

Deeper and deeper, deeper like an arrow.

This beautiful silence, and your being IN ...

To make it deeper, Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Relax, let go. Just be dead.

The body is far away ...

So is the mind. You are just the inner flame at the deepest core of your being.

This is the only thing in you that is eternal, that knows no death, no change.

In this great moment you are all buddhas.

Remember it twenty-four hours, that inside you, the buddha is sitting.

You are just a temple.

Inside the temple is this flame of light.

To continue to remember it ... your every act will become graceful, your every word will carry silence.

Your very being will spread joy.

Nivedano ...

(Drumbeat)

Come back.

Remembering the buddha, sit for a moment ....

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Can we celebrate?

Yes!