I Celebrate Myself 03

One time, when Daiten came to Sekito, the master asked him, “Are you a Zen monk or an ordinary monk?”
Daiten replied, “I’m a Zen monk.”
Sekito asked, “What is Zen?”
Daiten replied, “It is raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs.”
Sekito said, “Excluding raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs, bring your original face and show it to me.”
Daiten said, “Please Osho, exclude raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs, and look at me.”
Sekito said, “I have excluded them.”
Daiten said, “I have given it to you.”
Sekito said, “What is the no-mind you have given to me?”
Daiten said, “Not different from you, Osho.”
Sekito said, “No concern about you.”
Daiten said, “Really, there is not a no-mind nature.”
Sekito said, “Is there not a thing with you also?”
Daiten said, “If there is not a thing anymore, that is the real thing.”
Sekito said, “The real thing cannot be obtained. So, that is what you understand. Retain it firmly and keep it.”
Daiten then left Sekito and retired to Mount Reian in southern China, where many disciples would later gather around him.
Friends, I have been saying for years that it is time that the politicians should be watched, and they should be looked after by psychiatrists, psychoanalysts.
Since nuclear weapons have come into existence, the politicians have become immensely powerful. Power certainly corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It not only corrupts, it gives you megalomania. And every politician is a split personality; he has to be. He says one thing, he does another. He always has a mask to show to the people, and his real face is always hidden. The longer he remains in power, the more possibility of his going neurotic, schizophrenic.
It was okay in the past because the politicians could not do much harm, but today it is absolutely different. A single politician who is mentally, psychologically sick can destroy the whole beautiful planet.
I have been waiting for psychoanalysts and psychiatrists themselves to declare this situation, and the declaration has come today.
Two psychiatrists, very famous, known worldwide, Dr. Jablow Hershman and Dr. Julian Lieb, wrote in the Washington Post recently that there should be a shrink in the White House. At present there is an official physician for the president, but no psychiatrist. They said, “In this nuclear age, when the president of the US can start a nuclear war, one has to make sure that he is mentally stable, and not subject to euphoria, manic depression, or suicidal tendencies.”
They cited several examples:
President Nixon, before he resigned, had been miserable for months – avoiding people, taking long walks alone. He refused to talk about how he felt, and had drawn away from his family. He was not sleeping enough, and once could not sleep for four nights in a row. He was drinking too much, sometimes before lunch. He had become unpredictable: one minute close to tears, the next furious over some bit of nonsense, and an hour later on top of the world. Sometimes he seemed out of focus. He rambled or gave orders that were ridiculous. One night he walked the halls of the White House talking to the portraits on the walls. He hinted of suicide.
Such episodes are usually kept under wraps, but we have begun to realize how widespread the phenomenon is – from the periodic inertia of Ronald Reagan, to the latest revelations about Lyndon Johnson, to the details of incapacitating conditions suffered by Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.
It would be a good sign if every president, not only the American president, but every prime minister – whoever has the power to destroy this world – had a personal psychiatrist looking after him. But that is not enough. Man is body – the personal physician can look after it. Man is mind – the psychiatrist can look after it. But man is something more too. So what these two psychiatrists, Hershman and Lieb, are suggesting is an incomplete cure.
Every president, every prime minister, every king around the world, should also have a master of meditation. Only then can we be safe, and this planet can be safe.
Psychiatry can only help to keep the mind normal, at the most, but its limit is the mind. But man’s existence is far bigger, it is beyond the mind. That beyond has to be understood also, and only that beyond can create the right sanity. That beyond can make you peaceful and silent, creative, celebrating. Once you know something of the beyond, you are no longer suicidal, and you are no longer murderous.
Nuclear weapons will disappear from the world if we can make the politicians understand the absolute necessity of it. Just as they are not feeling embarrassed by having a personal physician, they should not be embarrassed by having a personal psychiatrist, and they should not be embarrassed by having a personal master of meditation. These have become absolute necessities.
If we want the world to survive, the politicians have to be kept under control by intelligent people, by people who know the secrets of life, of eternity; the people who can impart that energy, that understanding, that experience of the innermost being. This is the only possibility, otherwise there is no hope for humanity, and no hope for life – no hope for Gautam Buddhas, people rising to the highest peak of consciousness, to the deepest depth of consciousness.
And this planet is special. It is a very small planet, but it is absolutely unique because it has life, consciousness and the opportunity for evolving into Gautam Buddhas. It should be saved at any cost. We cannot afford a global suicide.
I thank Dr. Hershman and Dr. Lieb for their suggestions, but I would like them to know that their suggestions are incomplete. More psychiatrists go mad than any other profession – four times more. More psychiatrists commit suicide than any other profession. More psychiatrists are vulnerable to all kinds of mind sicknesses because the psychiatrist is not a meditator. This is our whole inner poverty.
The psychiatrist knows about the mind, but mind is not in itself the eternal source of life. It can slip at any moment into neurosis. At any moment it can become megalomania. A little power…
I am also worried about the psychiatrists who will be looking after the presidents and the prime ministers. They themselves may turn out to be megalomaniacs because they now have great power!
So their suggestion is good, but it has to be supported by a master of meditation who can look after the president or prime minister, and also can look after the psychiatrist. Do you understand what I mean?
It is absolutely urgent because we don’t have much time before somebody goes crazy. Any moment the destruction of the earth is imminent.

The questions from sannyasins.
The first question:
Osho,
I heard you say existence is nonjudgmental, but our minds are full of judgments.
Where do they come from? Are they also related to the idea of God?
Existence is nonjudgmental.
It is one of the greatest contributions of Zen to humanity that you need not be a saint to be awakened. You can be awakened from any angle, from any dimension of life.
It is almost like somebody is dreaming that he is murdering someone, and somebody else is dreaming a very sweet dream that he is serving the poor people. Somebody is dreaming that he is very virtuous, a saint, and somebody is dreaming that he is a murderer, the worst kind of criminal.
Do you think the saintly dreamer will wake up sooner, and the sinner and the criminal will take a little longer time to wake up? They will all wake up exactly at the same time, by the same method. Just throw a bucket full of ice-cold water and they will jump out of their beds. It does not matter whether they were dreaming of sin or they were dreaming of virtue.
Zen’s understanding is – and I absolutely support it, it is my own experience – that you can wake up wherever you are, whatever you are doing; your actions, your personality, your character, don’t count at all. This is a tremendous declaration because all religions have been telling you, “First you have to become a saint, only then can you enter the paradise of God.”
Zen gives you a tremendous equality. It does not matter what you are doing, it does not matter how you are behaving, it does not matter what is your personality – polished, crude, uncultured… You can wake up by the same method – meditation – directly, without changing anything in your character, in your actions.
Existence in this way is nonjudgmental. It gives life to the sinner, it gives life to the saint, without any discrimination. It gives love, showers silence over all, without any discrimination.
Your question is, where do these judgments come from? Fundamentally, originally, they come from the fiction of God. But a fiction cannot do anything, the fiction has to hire living people. They come from your priesthood, from your popes, your shankaracharyas, your imams, your Ayatolla Khomeniacs.
Just now, a Mohammedan has written a book about the holy Koran. It has been banned by Rajiv Gandhi – and he has not read it – because the Mohammedan pressure in India is of immense importance. They vote in a solid block and they are second to Hindus – they create fear. They asked that the book should be banned. It is being banned in many countries which are Mohammedan.
Ayatolla Khomeini came on the radio in Iran and declared that wherever this man is, he has to be immediately killed, murdered – not only the person who has written the book, but the person who has published it, and the person who has printed it, and the person who has the sole agency to sell it. All four have to be butchered wherever they are. And it is the duty of every Mohammedan to finish them off as quickly as possible and burn all the copies of the book. Not a single copy should remain anywhere in existence. And that man has done an immense job of analysis.
This you call a world which is democratic? This you call a world where there is freedom of speech?
These priests are the source, the immediate source. In the name of God they have made your minds judgmental. Without understanding anything, you are carrying judgments in your mind.
The moment you see something, a judgment immediately arises. You don’t have to make the judgment, it has become almost automatic. You see a rose and suddenly you watch a judgment arising: “This is beautiful.” But the moment you say, “This is beautiful,” the judgment is hiding the rose. The judgment is coming from past experiences of roses. But this is a new rose, you have never met it before, it has never before been on the earth. For the first and last time it has come into expression. You may have seen roses, but this one is not the same. All your judgments about other roses are figments of your memory.
The robotlike arises in you: “This is beautiful” – not that you have understood its beauty, not that you are existentially in direct contact with its beauty, not that your eyes are absolutely pure and rejoicing the beauty of the rose. The judgment comes and you destroy the rose. The judgment stands between you and the rose, and you are lost in past memories of roses that you have seen before. But this is not one that you have ever come across.
Any judgment is past oriented, and existence is always herenow, life is always herenow. All judgments are coming from your past experiences, your education, your religion, your parents – who may be dead, but their judgments are being carried by your mind and they will be given as a heritage to your children. Generation after generation, every disease is being transferred as a heritage.
Only a nonjudgmental mind has intelligence because it is spontaneously responding to reality.
I want you to drop God; I want you to drop your scriptures. I want you to drop your parents. I want you to drop everything that has been given to you with all good intentions – that does not matter. Those good intentions don’t have any weight but they have made you judgmental.
So immediately, without knowing, without understanding, without experiencing, you come to a judgment. The judgments come immediately, so quickly that if you are not alert enough you are not going to be able to get rid of them. They are just waiting there in your mind, in the storage of your memory. The moment you see something, the moment you hear something, immediately comes the judgment: “It is right, it is wrong. It is according to my mind, hence I agree with it.”
But if you are agreeing according to your mind you are not agreeing, you are simply getting your mind to become stronger.
The function of the master is a very delicate one. He has to take away all your mind, slowly, slowly so that a certain pure space exists in your mind. Only then have you the eyes to see, and the ears to hear. Then everything goes deep, without any obstacles, to your very center of being.
Everything in existence is nourishing. Everything in existence has its own purpose, is fulfilling its own job. That which you deny according to your borrowed knowledge is needed by existence, otherwise it would not have been there. Anything that is happening anywhere must have some support from existence, otherwise it will simply drop dead.
Life needs variety. Just think of a world where everybody is a saint – it will be the worst world, the most boring. And the boredom will become so heavy that it will create only one desire: how to finish yourself because you cannot finish all the saints. Only you can commit suicide to get out of that boredom. If all the people were of the same size and had the same faces… Howsoever beautiful the faces, howsoever beautiful the personalities, if they were all the same, carbon copies of carbon copies, you would be utterly bored. Knowing one woman, you would know all women, finished – there is no opportunity to have another experience. Knowing one man, you would have known all men.
And that is not right because every man is different and every woman is different. Every rose is different from other roses, every flower is different from other flowers.
Just now, as I was getting ready to come here, taking my bath, the cuckoos in my garden were really going cuckoo! But I wondered that every cuckoo has its own song to sing. I could make out clearly how many cuckoos there were. Their songs were different, their sounds were different.
Existence takes care of variety.
Sinners are also needed in this world – they make life more cheerful. Saints are also needed as an example that you should not follow them. They are as dead as dodos. They are good examples to avoid. Sinners are nice people. I have never seen a sinner sad and I have never seen a saint joyful. It is strange; if religions were true, it should have been otherwise. But religions are not true.
Sinners have a quality of innocence which saints don’t have. They are very calculating, very cunning. What they are doing in their saintliness is just purchasing some good land, some good house, some bank account in the other world. They are so greedy that they are not satisfied with this beautiful planet and this beautiful dance of life. Sinners are not greedy people, they rejoice in small things – a beautiful woman, delicious food, just a little drink; and they are so happy to dance and sing and celebrate. These are the real salt of the earth. They are needed. And saints are needed so that you can avoid them.
But remember, everything in this world has its own place and has its own dignity, and by your judgment you are destroying the dignity of someone, you are interfering in somebody’s territory.
A man who is full of judgment becomes ugly, become unbearable. A man without judgment is always welcomed by everyone because he will never interfere in your territory, he will never trespass your spirituality and your dignity.
All your judgments are coming from the priesthood in the name of God. God cannot do it by himself because he is a lie; he does not exist, he has never existed. But priests go on supporting the lie, it is their very profession. If God is completely exposed, then the priests have no way to continue their exploitation of humanity. They are selling God to almost the whole of humanity – a God which does not exist.

I have heard about a shop in New York which was advertising: “We have manufactured invisible hairpins.” Certainly there were queues of women. Invisible hairpins? No woman can resist the temptation.
One woman looked into the box when she got it – of course you cannot see invisible pins – seeing the box empty, she asked the salesman, “Are you sure that there are invisible hairpins inside?”
He said, “To be frank with you, we ran out of invisible hairpins almost two weeks ago, but the empty boxes are selling. But the truth is, there are no invisible pins, and only empty boxes were selling from the very beginning.”

You can sell invisible pins to people… God is the most invisible thing in the world. Perhaps some day we may invent invisible pins, but God cannot be manufactured. And a God manufactured by us will not be much of a God. We would like to change the model every year, and those who are super-rich would like to change every six months.
Because God is nowhere to be found, the priests can go on thriving on the business. They know perfectly well – they are the only people who know – that God does not exist. But they cannot say it because what would happen to their whole profession? A millions-of-years-old profession, supporting millions of priests around the world – and they are the highest people everywhere. They don’t want to lose it, they don’t want to miss their whole business.
So they go on creating more commandments, more judgments, they go on creating more theological fictions and they go on feeding your mind. Their whole purpose is that your mind should be full of all kinds of rubbish, so you cannot have any space to be intelligent – because if you can have an empty mind, no-mind is not far away. The empty mind becomes the door to no-mind. When the empty mind becomes a stepping-stone to no-mind, it creates no problems, no obstacles.
So your mind has to be filled with the holy Koran, with the Holy Bible, with the holy Gita, and there are thousands of scriptures. You can choose whatever kind of rubbish you want – it comes in all sizes and all shapes. There is immense choice. There are three hundred religions on the earth. You can’t imagine a new religion, they have exhausted all possibilities. Three hundred religions about one God – you can choose. You are free to choose but you are not free not to choose.
And that’s what I am teaching you: don’t choose.
Explore, discover, don’t decide before you have realized. And realization, liberation, freedom, will give you an insight into everything. You will feel compassionate and loving to the whole life that surrounds you, nonjudgmental.
I have told you the story of a Zen master…

A thief entered his house without knowing that it was a Zen master’s house – it contained nothing. The Zen master felt very embarrassed. The night was cold and he had only one blanket that he used in the day to cover his body, and in the night to cover his body to go asleep. That was all that he had, and the whole house was empty.
He felt so compassionate toward the thief that when the thief was leaving, he threw the blanket on his shoulders and told him: “Please accept it. You came without informing me. If you had just informed me at least three days before, I would have gathered something for you. I feel for the first time really poor. I cannot give you anything; this house is empty.”
And the thief was very much afraid of this man. He was standing naked in the cold winter night and he had given his only possession, the blanket. But the man was strange, he was saying to him, “You should first inform me and then you can come. But give me a little time so I can beg from people and keep something for you. This is not right for you to come so suddenly without any information.”
The man certainly was strange. The thief had come across hundreds of people – everybody was angry, everybody was handing him over to the police. He had suffered in jails so many times. Everybody was abusive, everybody was insulting. Out of jail, life was difficult. Nobody was ready to give him a job, so finally, he had to commit another crime just to go to jail because that had become his home. At least he had food, shelter, clothes.
This man was strange. The thief became afraid of him – he rushed out of the door. And the Zen monk shouted, “Stop! That’s not right, come back. First give me a ‘Thank you’ so that you don’t feel guilty that you have stolen anything – I have given it to you.
“And then close the door. You have opened the door, at least this is your responsibility to close the door. I am naked, the door is open. The cold wind is blowing and you don’t have any compassion.”
So he gave him a “Thank you,” and while he was leaving and closing the door, the saint said, “Perhaps someday this ‘Thank you’ will save you, this closing the door will be of much help to you.”
The thief could not understand what help it could be. But that night, looking through the window to the full moon in the sky, the Zen master wrote a small haiku which said:
I am so poor.
I would have loved
to give this moon to that thief,
but I don’t possess it.
Two years afterward the thief was caught again in a very dangerous case – perhaps he would get a lifelong imprisonment.
The judge asked him, “Can you bring anybody as a witness that you are not a criminal? We don’t have any evidence, we have only circumstantial evidence that you have committed a crime. If you can produce a man of dignity to support you, that you are a man who is not capable of doing such a crime…”
He remembered the Zen master because that was the only person who could support him. He told the judge the name of the Zen master.
The judge said, “You are referring to a Zen master – I know him. If he says you are not a criminal, the case is finished.”
The Zen master came and he said, “The man that you are saying is a criminal is so nice. When I gave him a blanket, he thanked me and when I told him to close the door, he closed the door. He is so obedient, such a nice person. The blanket was not much, it had holes, it was old, but he received it as if I was giving him an empire. He was so grateful – just leave him.”
The case was dropped; the Zen master was well-known, even to the emperor.
The thief followed the Zen monk, and the Zen monk asked him, “Where are you going?”
The thief said, “I am not going anywhere, I am coming with you. I have found a man who has no judgments and who has returned my dignity to me. For the first time I feel I am a human being and there is someone who loves me, there is someone who feels for me, and there is someone who has compassion even for a man who has never done anything good.”
The Zen master said, “Don’t judge yourself.”

This is the trouble. People judge others and they judge themselves too. When they judge themselves they feel guilty; when they judge others they take people’s dignity and honor. This judgmental mind is a double-edged sword, it cuts both ways. It cuts you, it cuts others. It has destroyed the whole of humanity.
Drop this judgmental mind, and with this judgmental mind you will drop all your religions, all your moralities. You will become an innocent child, rejoicing in everybody and his uniqueness.

The second question:
Osho,
It seems that many of us are still plagued with guilt, even though we have been in your surgery a long time. No matter what it is, we feel guilty if we do, guilty if we don’t – a no-win situation. And the deeper it is, the more subtle and elusive it seems to be.
Will we ever be freed from this insidious emotional blackmail? Is this the surgery you have been doing in these discourses on God?
What do you think? By killing God I am killing your guilt. I have no concern with God because he does not exist. But I have to be very discreet not to kill your guilt directly, because you will stand in defense. So I kill the Gods – that is my indirect way to kill your guilt. Otherwise I have no concern with God. Without God you cannot be guilty, and that is certainly my concern.
I am operating on God – that is an indirect way of operating on you. It is a very strange kind of surgery, in which God is to be cut into pieces so that your clinging to God disappears and your clinging to God’s commandments disappears. When there is no God, suddenly you will drop all morality, and all so-called duties, virtues. Suddenly you will become a pagan.
I love the pagan. I want the world back in the hands of the pagans. All the religions have destroyed the pagans because they were people without any judgment, without any God, without any morality – just simple, innocent, flowing with nature, in a deep let-go. So whatever was spontaneous they were doing, whatever was coming from their nature they were following. There was no question of guilt, there was no situation like a no-win situation.
The pagan was always victorious. Whatever he was doing or not doing, he had his dignity, his honor. I want you to be pagans, that is the first step to being a buddha. I have chosen Zorba as an example of a pagan, and that is the very foundation. On that foundation you can make a shrine for the buddha. But without the foundation, the buddha is hanging in the air like a balloon. You can worship it, but you cannot be nourished by it unless your roots are deep into the earth. Your branches cannot grow into the sky, you cannot touch the stars without deep roots in the earth. First you have to be very earthly, earthbound, only then will you start growing toward the stars.
Without roots in the earth you become simply a star gazer, you don’t grow toward the stars. You simply look at the buddha, you worship, you pray. But neither worship is going to help nor is prayer going to help. What is going to help is a real foundation; and that real foundation is to be without God, to be without scriptures, to be without discipline, to be without any commandments. Be a free man, don’t be a spiritually enslaved person.
Once you have attained freedom from all these fictions, mythologies, you will feel so great, so fresh, so young, and so alive, that the dance will come by itself; so abundantly rich in your innermost being because your innermost being is the place from where you are joined with the cosmos. Your roots in the cosmos grow from your innermost center. Once you have accepted existence as it is, you have accepted yourself also as you are.
If you want to improve on existence, on other people, you cannot be at ease with yourself. Your own judgments will kill you. You have never thought about it: whenever you are judging somebody, you are judging yourself also. If you condemn somebody as a thief, you are condemning yourself also. You may have done many kinds of stealing – you may have stolen thoughts from other people, you may have stolen hypotheses from other people.
It is not only money, anything that you take from others without being grateful to the person, without his knowledge, is stealing. Money is the most ordinary thing in the world, there are far higher values. When you imitate, you are stealing. If you imitate Jesus, if you imitate Buddha, what are you doing? – you are stealing their personalities. You are a thief of the worst kind and you cannot feel at ease.
I have never judged in my life. I have loved all kinds of people; just their uniqueness makes them more lovable. And because I have loved all kinds of people without discrimination, I have no way of feeling guilt, I have no way of rejecting myself. I have loved myself immensely.
These two go together: if you judge others you will feel guilty, and you will also be continuously judging yourself – whether it is right or wrong. Both have to be dropped together because they are two sides of the same phenomenon. And it is so easy. Don’t ask me how long it will take – that is a cunning way of postponing. It does not take time, it needs understanding. And that understanding is possible now, this very moment. You drop all your judgments – you drop all your guilt. They go together down the drain.
Then you will live like a healthy animal, and out of your health and out of your healthy animal will arise the greatest experience possible. As you become natural you are coming closer to the experience of the buddha.
Only Zorbas can be buddhas. Gautam Buddha himself was a Zorba. Buddhists don’t understand it. For twenty-nine years of his life – the first part of his life – he had as many beautiful women as any man in the whole of history. He had all kinds of comforts and luxuries that were available in those days. He lived in so much luxury, so much drinking, dancing, singing – that was his whole life for twenty-nine years. What does not usually happen to you even by the time you are eighty years, happened to him by the age of twenty-nine.
He became fed up – everything was repetition. Because he was surrounded with so many women, he became fed up with women. You don’t become fed up because of your wife. Your wife is a protection, she does not allow you to look this way or that way, she keeps you looking straight forward, looking ahead – four feet ahead, not above! And you don’t want to create unnecessary trouble for yourself, so you have to follow. And because she is imposing certain moralities on you, she has to follow those moralities herself; otherwise she will not be able to impose them.
It is a very complex system. The husband becomes the prison to the wife, the wife becomes the prison to the husband. Both are slaves and both are masters; both are prisoners and both are jailers – and both want to get rid of the other! But both have values – that marriages are made in heaven, and what God has put together you should not put asunder.
Now, no marriage I have seen happens in heaven. God himself does not have a wife and he has escaped far away from women – perhaps millions of light-years away… There is no possibility of finding any woman. But the desire is there, so he comes once in a while to create a Jesus Christ. Once in a while, he has to be forgiven… The poor fellow is living with a Holy Ghost. I have been trying to find whether this Holy Ghost is a man or a woman; perhaps he is capable of functioning in both ways!
I have heard a story…

When Henry Ford died… He was a perfectionist and a great man, one of the greatest, richest people. He came from a poor family and all that he created was by his own effort, with his own intelligence.
So when he met God in heaven, God asked Henry Ford – because he was the right person to ask – “What do you think of my creation? You are a perfectionist, I know. You have created the best cars and you went on improving and improving and improving. What do you think of my creation?”
He said, “Your creation needs tremendous improvement.”
God said, “For example?”
He said, “For example you have put the pleasure center of men and women in the wrong place. The woman’s pleasure center is between two exhaust pipes!”

He was a manufacturer of cars, and he seems to have been right: “What kind of dirty fellow are you? The pleasure center is at the dirtiest place. Could you not put it somewhere else? In the hands…?” And I think his criticism is right. God was just shocked – he used to think that Henry Ford was a Christian!
But when you force judgment on people, these people are going to force judgment on God if by chance they meet him.
The judgmental mind is going to judge everybody, it is going to judge the person himself. Everything becomes miserable, everything seems to be wrong, everything seems to be negative. He always goes on counting the thorns in a rosebush and never looks at the flower. There is no time to look at the flower, counting the thorns takes his whole life. He always looks at the dark side of things. If you ask him, he will say, “It is a miserable world. Between two nights there is only one day!”
His whole perception is to condemn and he feels good in condemning. But he does not know that when he is condemning others he is also condemning himself. Deep down he will feel guilty.
Don’t postpone. Don’t ask me how long it is going to take – it depends on you. If you are miserable and feeling caught in a no-win situation, then why carry it? If I could drop it, why can you not? I am not a messiah, or a prophet, or an incarnation of God. I don’t have any miracle powers with me, I am just as human as you are. If I could do it, who is preventing you?
Perhaps you have started enjoying your misery. Perhaps you have become habituated and it seems that if you drop your misery you will be empty. Yes, you will be empty, but just in the interim period which is very small. For a moment you will feel all is lost, but soon you will see your emptiness starts becoming filled with a totally new energy that you have been repressing by your judgments, and guilt, and morality, and religion, and God.
Suddenly you will feel from your own very sources new, fresh waters of life are rising like fountains. Soon you will find yourself filled with tremendous contentment, filled with light, joy, blissfulness – not only filled but overflowing. Such an abundance is possible, but you have to take the risk of being empty. And it is not much because what you are losing is only misery, guilt, sadness, suffering, hellfire; what you are dropping is not worth keeping.
Once you are clean, you are ready for existence to assert itself with all its grace and beauty, with all its wisdom and enlightenment. But for a moment you will have to be empty. Before the new enters, the old has to go. Before the truth enters, the false has to leave.
You have certainly been blackmailed. The whole of humanity has been blackmailed, and the blackmailing continues. It starts from the very childhood and it goes on even when you are going to your grave and the priest is giving a sermon. From birth to death the priest is blackmailing you in the name of God, in the name of great things. The politician is blackmailing you in the name of nationalism, patriotism. Your own parents are blackmailing you in the name of obedience and respect for the elders.

Once I participated in an all-India seminar of professors, arranged by the federal government under the auspices of the education ministry. All the professors were discussing only one thing – one professor after another, another, another, another – that the problem was that students don’t have any respect, and something had to be done about it. It seemed everybody was in absolute agreement.
When it came for me to speak, I said, “All these people are talking nonsense.”
The education minister was shocked, and all the professors who had fallen asleep woke up. I said, “It is not that students are not respecting, the problem is that the professors are not worthy of respect. You are taking the whole problem from the wrong side; that’s why you cannot solve it.
“And I am saying it from my own experience. I have been a professor for nine years and nobody has been disrespectful to me. Because I respect my students, how can they disrespect me? I respect them, I love them, I give them freedom. I tell them: ‘If you want to leave the class, you can leave silently without disturbing anybody. Don’t ask me; you don’t need to. Whenever you want to come into class, you can come. Don’t ask me because your asking me disturbs me and disturbs the class.’”

When I first entered the university, I could not believe my eyes: the girls were sitting on one side, the boys were sitting on the other side, and in between there was a big gap. I said, “What is the matter? To whom am I going to talk? To this gap? And I don’t have the kind of eyes that go this way…
“So if you want me to teach, you have all to bring your desks into the middle and be together because I hate to see you throwing letters – it is ugly. Why not sit beside the girl and enjoy the warmth and share your love? You are old enough – you don’t need any control. I don’t think you are cannibals and that you will eat the girl or do something… So get mixed immediately!”
They looked at each other thinking, “This is a very strange situation. Every professor functions like a constable, keeping us apart, and this fellow seems to be strange…”
I said, “Be quick, otherwise I will leave the class and I will never come again!”
Unwillingly they had to pull their desks together. With great embarrassment they went to the girls who they had been throwing stones at, whose bicycles they had been puncturing. The girls were very much… And I said, “Be close to each other. Why are you shrinking to this side and the girl is shrinking to that side? That gap between you has to be filled. Be together!”
They reported to the vice-chancellor: “What are we supposed to do? Another professor comes and he asks, ‘What is happening? Put your desks apart! Who has done this?’ And we are continually carrying the desks from side to side.”
So the vice-chancellor called me and he said, “This is not right on your part.”
I said, “Have you ever been young?”
He said, “Yes.”
I said, “Then be frank. Have you ever loved a girl when you were a student?”
He looked all around to see that nobody was listening. I said, “There is nobody. Only I am here, and you can be truthful.”
He said, “Yes.”
I asked him, “Have you ever punctured their bicycles, thrown stones?”
He said, “Yes.”
I said, “Then you understand everything. You are creating an unnatural situation. Now my students will not puncture anybody’s cycle, they will not throw stones – they don’t have to. And this is absolutely natural. They are sexually mature – they became mature long ago when they were fourteen and thirteen. Now they are twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty-five. You have been torturing them for ten years continuously, blackmailing them against biology, against existence, against nature. This is the time they should have as many experiences as possible before they choose a woman or a husband.”

You go shopping… Even for small things you go to many shops to check the price, to see the product. You are going to live with a woman or a man your whole life and you have not been shopping…? First go shopping. Just go around and have as many experiences as possible. If you are intelligent, all these experiences will make you richer. Then you will be capable of finding a woman or a man with whom you can be in deep love and friendship.
There is no need for divorce. There will be few divorces if we give children enough experience. Then they will know that there are slight differences between man and man, woman and woman. And they will also come to know with what kind of woman, with what kind of man they feel the most at ease, at home. You don’t give them any opportunity. This is sheer blackmail.
Your parents are responsible, your God is responsible, your priests are responsible, your teachers are responsible – your whole society is responsible. But ultimately you are responsible. Why are you living in this prison when the doors are open? Get out! And don’t ask me how long it will take. It depends on you whether you run out of the prison, or walk in such a way that you will be caught again and put back into your cell.

A small child was late to school one rainy day, and his teacher asked him, “Johnny, you are always late. Again you are late?”
He said, “What can I do? It was so slippery that I would put one foot forward and I would slip two steps backward.”
The teacher said, “If you are right, then how did you manage to get here? One step ahead, two steps backward… You could never have got here.”
He said, “You don’t understand. I started walking toward my house! Finally, I got to school.”

So it all depends on you – it is a very slippery way. If you really want, this moment it can happen. But if you postpone, then perhaps never. Now or never.
The sutra:
One time, when Daiten came to Sekito, the master asked him, “Are you a Zen monk or an ordinary monk?”
Daiten replied, “I am a Zen monk.”
Sekito asked, “What is Zen?”
Daiten replied, “It is raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs.”
There is a certain ancient method coming from Taoism to Zen – it can give you a very empty mind. If you just close your eyes and move your eyeballs, soon you will see you are getting dizzy, just as the whirling Dervishes in Sufism get dizzy by whirling. But when the Sufi Dervish gets dizzy, he starts feeling the center of the cyclone. His whole body is moving, but there is something at the very center which is unmoving – that is his very being.
For Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi it took thirty-six hours of continuous whirling. He went on and went on and went on. And that is the whole secret of it – you should not stop because you are feeling tired, you should go on and on till you fall. Not that you have to manage to fall, you just go on whirling. A time is bound to come when you cannot manage not to fall. You will fall down almost dead. I say almost – the whole body is utterly tired. But there you can see the difference: the whole body is so tired and so dead, it wants to go back to the earth just to rest. You will see inside you there is still a center full of light, full of energy, not tired at all. Contrast is needed to see that center.
Zen has a far simpler method. There is no need to stand and whirl. You just sit down and roll your eyes, your eyeballs, faster and faster, and soon you will see your whole head is whirling. A moment comes when this very whirling of the head inside gives you the passage which leads to your very center below your navel.
In Zen they call it the hara – it is your very life source. You must have heard that in Japan, suicide is called hara-kiri. If you push a knife in just two inches below your navel, it will hit the hara center which is your life source. So without a single drop of blood, the person dies because he has hit the life center and opened the door for life to fly out into existence. They have found the best method to commit suicide. But how did they find it? They found it through meditation. The same center is your birth, and the same center is your death.
So when you are whirling your head, you will find a passage which is not touched at all by your whirling – either by whirling the body, or just by moving your eyeballs. Both do the same function – you reach your life center.
Perhaps this Zen monk had been using that method for meditation. So he said,
“It is raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs.”
Sekito said, “Excluding raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs, bring your original face and show it to me.”
Neither eyebrows nor eyeballs contain your original face, the buddha, the awakened one. So leave them aside, these are unnecessary things, nonessential: “…bring your original face to me.”
Daiten said, “Please Osho, exclude raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs and look at me.”
Daiten was certainly very close to enlightenment. He is saying to Sekito, “Please Osho – oh, great master – exclude raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs and look at me. This is my original face.”
Sekito said, “I have excluded them.”
Daiten said, “I have given it to you.”
…If you have excluded the eyebrows and the eyeballs, I have given my original face to you.
These dialogues are so valuable, so mysterious. But once you have got the knack of understanding them, they give you such tremendous keys to open the mysteries of life.
Daiten said, “I have given it to you.”
Sekito said, “What is the no-mind you have given to me?”
Daiten said, “Not different from you, Osho.
…It is the same: you have it; I have also got it. There is no need for any explanation, there is no need for any answer from you. It is the same: “Not different from you, Osho.”
Sekito said, “No concern about you.”
Daiten said, “Really, there is not a no-mind nature.”
He is saying, “Once I have found my original face, I am no more. And when I am no more, my mind is no more, my no-mind is also no more. In fact, my individuality has melted into the cosmic whole. Don’t ask me personal questions, I am no longer a person, only a presence.”
Sekito said, “Is there not a thing with you also?”
…Are you sure that you don’t have anything left that needs to be dissolved?
Daiten said, “If there is not a thing anymore, that is the real thing.”
When you don’t have anything, you have the real thing, the very essence of existence, the very essence of life. When you lose yourself, you have found really yourself for the first time. This is the mystery of existence.
By losing, you find. By dissolving, you arise. By disappearing, you find yourself becoming the whole – not disappearing but expanding to infinity.
A great statement from Daiten:
“If there is not a thing anymore, that is the real thing.”
Sekito said, “The real thing cannot be obtained.”
“The real thing cannot be obtained” means that the real thing is always there. So there is no question of achieving it, obtaining it, finding it, reaching it, realizing it. All these words are meaningless. It is already there; you have never lost it.
“The real thing cannot be obtained. So that is what you understand. Retain it firmly and keep it.”
Daiten then left Sekito and retired to Mount Reian in southern China, where many disciples would later gather around him.
He became a master in his own right, not saying a single word when Sekito said, “If you understand this, then: retain it firmly and keep it.” He has given him the seal of enlightenment: “You understand it, you are very clear about it. I have tried to trap you into a question, but you always managed to get out of it. So now that you have got it, retain it, keep it.”
Daiten did not say a single word. In deep silence, in deep gratitude – which is beyond words – he simply left and moved to a mountain in southern China: …where many disciples would later gather around him.
You are life, eternal life. You are existence, infinite existence. You are pure no-mind. Just misguided, misdirected, you have forgotten yourself. All that is needed is, in the words of Gautam Buddha, “Sammasati – just remember yourself.” You don’t have to go anywhere, just a remembering of a forgotten language, a remembering what you already are. It is not a realization because you have never been otherwise.
You don’t have to go to any Kaaba or to any Jerusalem or to any Kashi, you have just to remember, in a silent state, your authentic being. And suddenly, all that you thought was important becomes false. All that you thought – power, prestige, money, respectability – just disappear like dreams of no meaning at all. Suddenly, with an easy heart, you start living life in a totally new way, out of your spontaneity, out of your simplicity, out of your innocence.
Then whatever you do is good; then whatever you do is beautiful. Then whatever you do is coming out of your ultimate purity which has never been contaminated. Then your grace is the same as that of Buddha, and your clarity is the same as all the buddhas. You are fully awake, the night is over, the dreams are finished, the sun is rising. And the inner sun only starts rising, it never sets again.
Buson wrote:
A flash of lightning!
The sound of the dew
dripping down the bamboos.
These small pieces of a meditative mind: A flash of lightning! Visualize, you can see it: A flash of lightning! The sound of the dew dripping down the bamboos. Listen quietly and you will hear the sound of the dew dripping from the bamboos.
A man of utter silence comes to know so many things which are happening around you, but you are so occupied. Have you ever heard the sound of dripping dew from the bamboos? You are so occupied, you are so full of thoughts, that these subtle experiences around you which have tremendous beauty just escape you, just pass by your side. But you are occupied, you don’t look at them. Your ears, your eyes, your mind – everything is full. There is no space for any new experience to enter you.
Meditation makes you spacious, it cleanses all your senses. It makes your sensitivity so sharp that the smallest fragrance passing by your side, and you will immediately get it. Just a small sound, even the sound of silence, will be heard so loud and so clear.
We are living in trivia and we are missing all that is great in existence. Only a man of no-mind, a man of enlightenment, knows what beauty is, what joy is, what ecstasy is. And the moment you know what ecstasy is, you know you don’t need any God, you don’t need any commandment, you don’t need any discipline. Everything comes out of your no-mind, fresh. You live for the first time in freedom without bondage.
I define sannyas as living in freedom without bondage, living in freedom from every commandment, from every discipline, from every morality, from every religion.
This life in freedom is the only authentic life there is. And this is eternal – no beginning no end.

Maneesha’s question:
Osho,
In his book, Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley writes: “Religions that make no appeal to emotions have very few adherents.”
Looking at how many Christians there are in the world as compared with those drawn to Zen, it would seem true.
Are people attached to the idea of a God because it excites the emotions? That may include fear as well as love, but at least one feels something, and is for the time being taken out of oneself.
No. Maneesha, Aldous Huxley is a great thinker, but he is not an awakened buddha. What he is saying is logically true, but not existentially true.
“Religions that make no appeal to emotions have very few adherents,” but those are the only religions there are. The religions that attract people and appeal to their emotions are not religions, but mock religions, pseudo-religions, fake.
Authentic religion goes beyond emotions, feelings, sentiments, thoughts – that is your whole mind. But inauthentic religions which are more interested in exploiting people than freeing them, making them slaves rather than awakened, are bound to appeal to your emotions. Obviously, these religions have many more followers than Zen. But these religions are not religions, that’s why so many people are attracted to them.
When the masses are attracted to anything, you can be certain something is wrong because the masses consist of retarded people; their mental age is not more than ten. So there are traps for them. There are religions which conceive of God as a female, a beautiful woman. Suddenly you start feeling emotions arising – God must be the most beautiful woman in the whole existence; you become possessed with romance.
That’s where the Sufis get stuck – they conceive of God as a beautiful woman. They are the lovers, and God is the beloved; they are male, and God is female. Now, they are simply transferring all their biology, moving it from ordinary women made of bones and flesh and blood and mucus – and perhaps false teeth, and false hair, and rubber breasts…!
The scriptures don’t talk about rubber breasts, false teeth, plastic surgery, false hair, but when the scriptures were written, these things were not available. So they have talked only about the bones, and the flesh, and the blood, and the mucus. God must be a golden woman – no perspiration, no need for deodorants. God must be eternally young.
This is transferring your biology to a fake idea, a fiction. But this is not religion. This is driving you mad because if you want to love, you have to understand that the real women exist here, not in heaven. And what is the problem?
I have always wondered… The people who have written scriptures – and I have listened to great saints in this country – continuously talk about women as flesh, and bones, and blood, and nothing else. And I always wondered what they think about their own bodies? Are they made of gold? Or platinum? Not a single scripture talks about a man’s body, only a woman’s body.
My understanding is that these people are still deep down hankering for women. To repress that hankering they go on condemning the woman. They are not condemning for you, they are condemning for themselves so that they can repress the desire for a woman.
Now this is a transfer – that God becomes a woman. I will give you another case which will be simpler…

Meera, one of the most famous Indian women saints, thinks of God as a man, a young man, Krishna. She is the beloved and he is the lover. She sleeps with a statue of Krishna in her bed.
She got married – she belonged to a royal family so she got married to the prince of another royal family of Rajasthan. But the prince was utterly disgusted because she told him on the first night, “My husband is Krishna. Don’t touch my body, it will be sacrilegious. Only Krishna can make love to me, not you.”
Certainly the prince was absolutely angry, and never went again into the room where Meera used to live, sing songs and dance in front of Krishna. Her whole idea about Krishna was that he was a real man in the sky, and it was only a question of a few years before she would meet him. But preparation was needed – she had to make a heart-to-heart contact.
It is all repressed sexuality. The more she avoided a man, the more her love for Krishna grew, because sexual energy needs some expression in some way.
She left the palace, started dancing in the streets and singing songs of Krishna. You have to just look into the songs and you will see how sex is dominant, predominant: “When you come I will be waiting for you in my bed. When are you coming? The night is beautiful, the night flowers have blossomed, all lovers have reached to their beloveds, and I am waiting alone – when are you coming?”
These are subtle expressions of sexuality, sensuality. Her songs are very sensual. She had poured all her sensuality and all her sexuality into her songs, and Krishna became her hallucination. She dreamt of Krishna, she sang of Krishna, she danced with Krishna – she kept Krishna close to her heart.
She was worshipped by people as a great saint, but those who understand a little bit of psychology would have suggested, “You need psychiatric treatment, you are simply sick.”

These people have attracted many people, obviously. You already have your sexuality, so just a little turn… You already have your emotions and feelings, so just a little turn… It is all a mind game.
So Catholics can number six hundred million people, but Zen is only for the chosen few, the very elite. Its appeal is not for the masses; its appeal is only for the very intelligent who can look beyond the mind where there is no feeling, no thought, no sentiment. You have simply gone beyond your body chemistry, biology, physiology. You have entered a space which can only be called no-mind.
So, Maneesha, it is true that the religions that make no appeal to the emotions have very few adherents, but they are the only religions worth calling religions. And the religions which attract millions of people… You can see it – the lower and more pseudo the religion, the more people will be attracted to it. Now, what has the Catholic religion in it except fictions? Just take out those fictions and nothing remains. There is nothing essential.
Biblical scholars are continuously pointing out that the miracles told about Jesus are not true. They never happened because no contemporary source even reports them. And the miracles were such that they could not have gone unreported. It is a very simple thing. A man just puts his hands on a blind man’s eyes and the blind man starts seeing; a man turns water into wine; a man makes dead people come back to life again… Do you think such a man will go unreported? And he was not a Christian, so you cannot say that because he was Christian, Jews have not reported him. He was born a Jew, he lived a Jew, he died a Jew. Jesus never knew that he was a Christian.
Christianity was born three hundred years after Jesus’ death. He never knew that people would know him as Christ. Christ is the Greek word for messiah; messiah is the Hebrew word.
Christianity seems to be the lowest religion, hence it attracts the greatest mass. As religions go higher, less and less people are attracted, because less and less people can understand it.
Intelligence is not widespread. How many people can understand the theory of relativity by Albert Einstein? When he was alive, it was a well-known fact that there were only twelve people around the world who could understand what he meant by relativity.
Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest philosophers of this century, wrote a book on Albert Einstein. He called it The ABC of Relativity. And when he met Albert Einstein, Einstein asked, “Why have you written the ABC, why not the whole thing?”
Russell said, “I only understand the very beginning. I can’t claim that I understand the whole implications of your theory. I have written the ABC because that’s what I understand. Some day somebody will write the XYZ – perhaps you can write it.”
Only twelve persons around the world – does that make the theory of relativity wrong? And six hundred million Catholics “know” that Jesus is born of a virgin woman – only stupid people can believe that. That Jesus walks on water – only stupid people can believe that. All these fictions have been created to attract the masses.

I have heard about an archbishop of England who was visiting Jerusalem. He had two old friends, both of whom were very learned rabbis. So he informed them, “I am coming and I want to see every place where Jesus has been.”
Obviously he was interested to see the sea of Galilee where Jesus used to walk on water. The two rabbis took him in a boat to the place where he used to walk. The archbishop asked, “Can you also walk; you are great rabbis?”
They said, “Of course.”
He could not believe it. He said, “Then just give me a little example, just a few steps.”
So one rabbi got down from the right side and went walking on the water – the archbishop could not believe it.
Those two old rabbis said to him, “Can you do it? We don’t believe in Christ; you believe in Christ. If your faith is enough you can walk.”
Now it was a question of faith. Faith was at stake. The archbishop was hesitating and trembling inside. But in front of these two rabbis, to be defeated would not be right. So he said, “Okay, I can. I have faith. If you people who don’t believe in Jesus Christ can walk, why cannot I?”
And he went from the left side of the boat and immediately started drowning and shouting, “Save me! Help!”
So the two rabbis pulled him back. They said, “What happened?”
He said, “I don’t know, but I have faith.”
“Your faith does not seem to be worth much,” those two rabbis said.
Finally, the rabbi who had gone out said to the other rabbi, “Should we tell the boy the right thing?”
The archbishop heard their whispering. He said, “What are you whispering?”
They said, “The truth is, you got out from the wrong side. On this side, the right side, there are stones just below the water. The water is just covering them by one inch, not more than that. Jesus used to walk here, and every Jew can walk who knows these rocks. It is not faith, it is rocks!”

Just take away all the miracles, and what remains of Jesus? Take away the virgin birth, what remains of Jesus? Take away his claim which is absolutely pathological: “I am the only begotten son of God,” what remains of Jesus? Just an ordinary carpenter’s son riding on a donkey – a laughingstock!
So the Vatican has just now informed all the churches not to pay any attention to biblical scholars: “Because if you pay attention to them they will destroy your whole religion.” This is their whole religion.
But Gautam Buddha has not done any miracles, so you cannot destroy Gautam Buddha so easily. He is not born out of a virgin, and he is not the only begotten son of God. No nonessential is there, so you cannot take away anything. But certainly he becomes more difficult for the masses to understand.
His approach can be understood by the very intelligent people. So even in India… He was born in India, but his religion disappeared from India. The masses of India could not follow him. He did not give them what Maneesha calls “something.” He gave them nothing because nothing is the pure space.
Something is bound to be something in the mind. Nothing is the beyond-mind.
Gautam Buddha disappeared very quickly after his death. For two thousand five hundred years there has not been a single Buddhist in India. Even in the temple which the king Ashoka built as a memorial at the side of the bodhi tree where Gautam Buddha became enlightened, the priest is a brahmin. There was no Buddhist even to be at the memorial to take care of the temple at the memorial.
That brahmin does not believe in Buddha. He was paid and he is still being paid by Buddhists from outside India. He does not believe in Buddha, but he takes care. His family has been taking care of the temple for hundreds of years, generation after generation – just a caretaker. He does not believe in Buddha, he does not think that Buddha is the right person to belong to.
But Buddhism spread in China and Japan, in Tibet and Sri Lanka, in Korea and Taiwan – it reached faraway places. In Mongolia, in Afghanistan, in a few states which now belong to the Soviet Union, Buddhist statues and temples have been discovered.
It is so widespread, but the reason for its spread is that the Buddhists who went to these places started compromising. Buddha was a noncompromising man. No man of truth can be compromising – it does not matter. What matters is truth in its purity. But how many people are able to rise to that height, to that consciousness, to understand? Surely very few people.
So all the Buddhists around the whole continent of Asia are not true Buddhists, they have compromised with their local religion, they are mixed. If Buddha comes back, he will simply deny all these Buddhists because they are doing something which he was against, absolutely against. And they are all doing all those things just as a compromise.
Only Zen has not compromised – that’s why my respect for Zen. It has remained a very small thin stream of masters. It never became a mass religion – it cannot. The day it becomes a mass religion it will not be a religion anymore. My love for it, my respect for it, is because it is absolutely non-compromising, it is not interested in gathering crowds. It is interested only in the highest evolved human beings. That is my interest also. That’s why you cannot see masses coming to me.
The day masses start coming to me, I will not come. I hate the unconscious masses. They have been the cause of killing people like Socrates, killing people like al-Hillaj Mansoor, killing people like Jesus. There is every possibility that Gautam Buddha too was killed by being given poison. They made many attempts to kill Mahavira.
The masses are against the truth because truth is going to shatter all their lies. What Maneesha is calling “something” – that something is a lie, a consolation.
No man who loves the truth is going to console you. He is going to destroy all your consolations. He is there to take away all your lies so you can rise to the ultimate peak of consciousness. But that peak comes to you when you are no more.
When there is nothing inside you, then the whole existence simply starts showering on you flowers of peace, love, silence, ecstasy, a divine drunkenness.
Aldous Huxley is not right because he does not understand the difference between an authentic religion and a fake religion. He is a man of rational and logical understanding, but not a man who can be called meditative. It is because of this he started taking LSD. He wrote a book called Heaven and Hell in which he preaches that LSD gives you real samadhi, real enlightenment.
A chemical can give you enlightenment…? And after six hours, eight hours, twenty-four hours, enlightenment disappears and you are again your old fucking self!
This is the right time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Put on the lights!

One night, the German Zen master, Stonehead Niskriya, decides that he wants to get a date…
It is very difficult for Zen masters to get a date. He used to have a girlfriend…When I was telling you that I cannot see this way… [With crossed arms raised high, Osho indicates to both sides of the auditorium, simultaneously.] That girlfriend used to see this way! She always missed the Zen master Niskriya, so she never knew who he is. But even she escaped. So he went to Germany – you can see, here he could not find a single girl! So he went to Germany and picked up a punk girl. Even that punk girl has escaped! That’s why Niskriya is missing from his place. He has a fever.
Somebody has to have some compassion on him. He was thinking to go to Goa – not for Goa, but just to find another punk. So this story comes right on time…
One night, the German Zen master, Stonehead Niskriya, decides that he wants to get a date. But recently, he has had trouble getting any women to go out with him because they are afraid of his fierce appearance and his Zen stick.
So Stonehead has an idea. He disguises himself in a big overcoat, a black hat and sunglasses.
Then he goes into the Zorba restaurant and sits down next to Ma Papaya Pineapple. They begin to talk. Stonehead buys her a piece of pizza, and one thing leads to another, and finally Stonehead invites Papaya back to his room.
Papaya thinks this guy looks a bit weird wearing sunglasses at night, but thinks to herself, “Ah! What the hell! My chakras are open this week!” And they go off together.
When they get to his room, Stonehead turns off all the lights. “Well, Papaya,” he says, “I only like to do it in the dark. Is that okay with you?”
“Sure,” says Papaya, and they begin to get undressed.
Papaya is sitting on the edge of the bed in total darkness and Stonehead is standing next to her. When he bends over to take off his socks, Papaya reaches out in the dark and touches Stonehead’s shiny, bald head, hovering near her face.
“Wow!” exclaims Papaya in shock. “You had better be careful with that thing!”

An international team of eminent zoologists gathers in Africa to do research on the life cycle of the elephant in the wild. When a year is over, all the scientists publish their reports.
The Englishman’s report is titled: The African Elephant at Tea Time.
The American’s report is titled: Fast-food Cheeseburgers and the Modern African Elephant.
The Italian report is titled: Fitting an Elephant into a Ferrari.
The French report is titled: The Seventy-two Love Positions of the African Elephant.
The Russian report is titled: How to Hide Your Elephant from the KGB.
The German report is published in five volumes entitled: An Introduction to the African Elephant’s Left Testicle.
And, finally, the Polish report is titled: Elephants? What Elephants?

Young Father Fever is having problems again. So he goes for some fatherly advice from his superior, Father Fornicate.
“Tell me, my son,” says Father Fornicate, “are you still having trouble with those nasty fantasies? You know, things like crotchless panties, French ticklers and hot buttered nuns?”
“No, no!” cries young Fever, “this time it is the big M – you know, masturbation!”
“Ah! Masturbation!” replies Father Fornicate, crossing his legs and gritting his teeth. “Yes, one of my favorite subjects! What do you want to know about it?”
“Well,” replies Fever, perspiring, “is it as bad as they say?”
“My boy,” intones Fornicate, uncrossing his legs and adjusting his robe, “it used to be believed that masturbation led to insanity and blindness. But that is no longer thought to be true.”
“I am not worried about that,” says Father Fever, trembling. “I read in the latest Vatican report that masturbation can be the cause of a serious reduction in hearing – even deafness!”
Father Fornicate leans forward and says, “What?”

Nivedano…

[Drumbeat]

[Gibberish]

Nivedano…

[Drumbeat]

Be silent…
Close your eyes and feel your body to be completely frozen. This is the right moment to turn inward.
Gather all your energy, your total consciousness, and rush toward your center of being – it is just below your navel, two inches below exactly, inside – with an urgency as if it is your last moment of life. Without such urgency and intensity, nobody has ever reached the center of his being.
Faster and faster…
Deeper and deeper…
As you are coming closer to your center, a great silence descends over you just like soft rain. You can feel the coolness of it.
A little closer and you find a great peace arising from your own life sources, surrounding you like fragrance.
Even the night is helping you. The whole existence is helping you. Not only are you meditating, the whole existence is meditating with you.
Just one step more and you are at the center of your being, utterly drunk with the divine, an authentic ecstasy which is not produced by any drug like LSD, but is part of your opening of the inner lotus.
Once it is with you, it is forever and it transforms your whole life, your activities, your responses.
At the center, with this ecstasy you are no more, only a pure space.
This pure space we have personified as Gautam the Buddha. It simply means the awakened consciousness. The face of the buddha is everybody’s original face. In this space, suddenly you find you are no more but buddha is your original face. You are no more but life is, eternal life – without beginning, without end. You are no more, but existence is.
And this isness brings you tremendous liberation. This isness is the only salvation. Nobody else can give it to you, you already have it. All that is needed is a remembrance, it is a forgotten language. You got too occupied with trivia and forgot the essential.
At this moment, you are the most blessed people on the earth just because you are traveling inward, whereas everybody is going outward.
One thing to remember: buddha consists of only one quality – awareness, watchfulness, remembrance, witnessing. You can call it anything, but I prefer the word witnessing. To make it clear to you what it means:
Witness that you are not the body.
Witness that you are not the mind.
Witness that you are only a witness, just a pure mirror reflecting, responding to every situation.

To make this witnessing deeper and clearer, Nivedano…

[Drumbeat]

Relax… But go on remembering only one thing: witnessing. Witnessing is the whole secret of meditation, the master key to all the mysteries of existence and life.
As your witnessing deepens you start melting. Your separation disappears, all boundaries are dissolved, Gautama the Buddha Auditorium becomes an ocean of consciousness. Ten thousand buddhas have become one solid consciousness, one oceanic consciousness.
Collect all the experiences that are happening within you, the silence, the peace, the bliss, the ecstasy, the divine drunkenness, and persuade your buddha to come with you, to follow you.
These are the three steps of enlightenment.
The first step, buddha comes following you like a shadow – it is your nature, your eternal nature.
The second step, buddha comes ahead of you; you become the shadow.
And the third step, you disappear into the buddha. Not even a shadow is left of you. Only buddha is, only life is, only existence is.
This brings you immortality, eternity. It makes you whole with the cosmos, one with the whole. It is the ultimate sanity and the ultimate health and the ultimate holiness. This is Zen.

Nivedano…

[Drumbeat]

Come back, but come back as buddhas – very silent, very peaceful, with a great grace.
Sit down for a few moments, just to remember the golden path that you have traveled, and all the flowers that have showered on you of silence, peace, joy, ecstasy, and the opening into the eternal, into the ultimate, into the absolute cosmos.
Take care of the buddha who is just behind you as a silent presence. But you can touch it. It is tangible, you can feel its warmth. It will transform your ordinary acts into extraordinary responses.
It will bring to you a choiceless awareness where you simply do spontaneously what is good; a totally new kind of morality that springs out of your spontaneity, a totally new kind of life that is lived moment to moment with absolute dedication to existence.
A new freedom, a new sky to open your wings, and a new celebration without any reason, without any cause. Just overflowing energy, overflowing juices of life, overflowing ecstasies, overflowing songs and dances.
To transform life into a celebration is the only authentic science of religion.
I celebrate myself and I want you to learn the art of celebrating yourself – for no reason, for no cause. Just to be is enough, more than enough. To be part of the whole is such a great metamorphosis that you cannot resist – you have to dance, you have to sing, you have to express your joy, your blissfulness. You have to share it.
Sharing your blissfulness is the only charity; sharing your joy is the only gratitude. Existence has given you too much, share it. The more you share, the more you will have it. The less you share, the less you will have it. If you don’t share it, you won’t have it at all.