AFTER NANGAKU’S COMMENT ABOUT SEKITO, HE ONCE MORE SENT THE ATTENDANT MONK TO SEKITO TO ASK HIM A QUESTION. ON ARRIVAL, THE MONK ASKED SEKITO, ”WHAT IS LIBERATION?”
Before I discuss Sekito’s answer, I will tell you a small anecdote about al-Hillaj Mansoor, the Sufi mystic. A man came to him and asked the same question, ”What is liberation?”
He was sitting in a mosque with beautiful pillars all around. Listening to the question al-Hillaj Mansoor went immediately towards a pillar, and holding the pillar by both hands started shouting, ”Help me!”
The man could not understand what was happening. He had just asked about liberation and this man seemed to be mad. Mansoor is holding the pillar, and he is asking the man, ”Please help me, the pillar is holding me. And it is not leaving me. Liberate me.”
The man said, ”You are mad, you are holding the pillar. The pillar is not holding you.”
Mansoor said, ”I have answered, just get out of the place. Nobody is binding you.”
That was Sekito’s answer. ”WHO BOUND YOU?” Why are you seeking liberation? This is the right approach of Zen, to look into your bondage. Don’t bother about liberation. Your bondage is false and your own creation. Who has made you a slave? You yourself. And now you are asking, ”Liberate me.” Nobody can liberate you because nobody has enslaved you. It is your own game.
The answer is very hard, but very clear and very truthful. SEKITO SAID, ”WHO BOUND YOU?” First tell me what is your bondage? Who has done it to you? Why are you asking for liberation? Once you look into your bondage, you will simply start laughing. The bondage is your own creation; you can drop it right now. And once you drop the bondage, you see that liberation has been your nature; you don’t have to be liberated. You are born liberated, you have been liberated since the beginning, but you get again and again into a bondage.
Perhaps the bondage gives you a certain security, a certain safety. The bondage gives you a certain feeling of doing something against the bondage. But you are in your consciousness absolutely liberated, always liberated.
It is as if you lie down and close your eyes and start shouting, ”Wake me up!” Now it is very difficult to wake a man who is awake. It is easy to wake up a man who is asleep. You can throw cold water, a bucketful of ice-cold water, on his eyes and he will jump. You can take his blanket and he will immediately shout, ”What are you doing?”
But if a man is awake, lying with closed eyes, and says to you, ”Please wake me up!”... That’s what Sekito is saying to the monk who asked ”WHAT IS LIBERATION?”
SEKITO SAID, ”WHO BOUND YOU?” You have always been liberated; you are the buddha; you are the awakened one. It is your own fabrication, a fiction of bondage.
You can try a small experiment, just sitting in your room. Put your fingers this way. (The Master clasps his hands.) Hold your hands tight, close your eyes and just think that whatever you do, you cannot open your hands. For at least five minutes you continue repeating with closed eyes, ”Whatever I do, I cannot open my hands.” Then after five minutes make every effort to open them. Put your whole energy into opening them and you will be surprised – the more you try, the more it seems to be impossible. You have hypnotized yourself into a bondage.
Now the only way to open the hands which you have hypnotized into a bondage is not to make any effort of opening. Just relax. And the hands will be okay without your making any effort. Your effort is going against you because you have hypnotized yourself. Now you cannot, with effort you cannot open your hands.
We have hypnotized ourselves into all kinds of bondages and then we wonder how to be liberated. Then we make a great effort. Every effort brings more trouble. The hands become tighter, then you start freaking out. My God, what to do? The more effort I make, the tighter they become. It seems impossible because you don’t understand the simple process.
Hypnosis can be dissolved only by relaxation. You just relax. You don’t make any effort to open. The hands will open by themselves, because closing is an effort, but opening is just effortless. You don’t have to make any effort. That’s why... Have you seen any man dying with closed fists? Can a dead man manage to keep his fist closed? Impossible, because the fist needs effort and the dead man cannot make any effort. So all people die with open hands; all people are born with closed fists. Just watch a small child – fist! And watch a dead man, the hand is open, because the dead man is completely relaxed. For the first time in his whole life there is no tension.
The monk asked another question, ”WHAT IS THE PURE LAND?” But this is just going roundabout the same thing.
SEKITO RESPONDED, ”WHO MADE YOU DIRTY?” Why are you bothering about pure land?
THE MONK ASKED, ”WHAT IS NIRVANA?”
”WHO GAVE YOU BIRTH AND DEATH?” They are fictions. Your birth is a fiction, your death is a fiction; your body is born, your body will die. But you have never been born; you are coming, passing through many bodies, many births, many deaths and you are going on and on from beginning to end – eternity to eternity. You are an eternal light. So what is the point of asking, ”WHAT IS NIRVANA?” Nirvana simply means getting rid of birth and death; and birth and death are both fictions.
Even to say ‘getting rid of’ is not right. What is right is just to look deeply into everything, into your bondage, and you will find it is your creation. Your idea that you are a sinner, dirty, is your idea. Perhaps you have borrowed it from others, the preachers, the priests, the so-called religious saints.
They are making you feel dirty, sinners, getting ready to fall into hell. They are putting all kinds of humiliations on you. And people go on listening to humiliations.
From my very childhood I was fighting with every saint who passed through my village. My parents were worried, my family was worried: ”You disturb every meeting. Whenever some saint comes, the whole village gathers to listen to him and you stand up in the middle.” And my father would beat his head, ”Again he is standing, again disturbance!”
My basic point was, ”You are humiliating people by calling them sinners. Just tell me who is a sinner here and what sin he has committed. You are making a generalized statement, ‘You are all sinners.’ Just point out the person who is a sinner.”
And these saints were telling people, ”Don’t be attached to women because they are nothing but bones, flesh, mucus, blood covered in a bag of skin. Why are you getting attached to them?”
And I would immediately stand up and say, ”What about you? You think you are made of gold? Women are bones, blood, mucus, flesh; okay, what are you? And if blood, mucus and bones hug each other, what is the problem? Rubbing their skin, what is the problem? Why are you making so much fuss? What else can they do?”
But all the holy scriptures are full of these descriptions in detail, about women only, not about men. Strange! Both are made of the same stuff and in fact man comes from the woman. The woman never comes from the man.
Right now in America they have allowed in many states lesbian marriages, so a woman can marry a woman. There is no problem now, it is legalized. And this year they are expecting forty thousand babies out of lesbian marriages. They simply... one of the partners who is ready to carry a baby for nine months goes to the hospital, gets an insemination, an injection.
What is man? Just an injection, a syringe. Any syringe can do that work. So I used to tell the saints that you only have a syringe, and that syringe is also made of bones and flesh, and is covered with dirty skin. So what are you bragging about? And why are you making these people feel humiliated? They are all listening with their eyes down because he is telling a great truth. All scriptures are saying it too.
So my father would take me home, ”Because you disturb the whole meeting, people have started leaving and the mahatma is very angry.”
I said, ”I don’t care. If he is angry, he is going against his own teachings, he will suffer in hell. He was teaching against anger and now he is angry, so I have shown him his real face.”
My father would say, ”Just come home. Sometimes I feel worried that they will not even beat you, they will start beating me. And you are such a fellow... Not a single saint can part from the village who has not been disturbed by you. And we keep the information as secret as possible so you should not come to know that some mahatma, some saint, is delivering a speech. We give you money to go to the movie. ”
And the moment they gave me money I would say, ”Keep the money. I am coming with you. This money is never given to me for the movie, it is given only to protect the mahatma. I am not going, I am going to the real show.”
It became so difficult because of the problems that I created for the mahatmas, because it was a simple question: ”If two persons are rubbing their skin, what sin is there? Just tell me. I am rubbing my skin; it’s the same, it is just cleaning my hands, warming my hands. And if a man and a woman are rubbing their skin, they will fall into hell! And just look at your belly.”
All the mahatmas in India have big bellies and they are teaching people, ”Don’t eat with taste.” And they themselves... I said, ”Where does this belly come from? Stand up! Show your belly to the whole people. You are eating too much and the country is hungry. And I know that because of this belly you cannot make love to a woman. So now you are teaching everybody not to make love to any woman. It is because of this belly, not because of your religion.”
Such bellies I have seen... you would not believe it. Muktananda’s guru was Nityananda. Perhaps he has the biggest belly, an Everest. He was continuously lying down, because with that belly walking was difficult. And lying down, it does not seem that Nityananda has a belly, it seems the belly has Nityananda. The belly is just like a mountain; on this side a small head, on that side two small legs. These creatures have become great mahatmas. I have never seen such a perfect belly, and he was continuously lying down and eating sweets. And worshippers were bringing sweets and halva and puri and making his belly bigger and bigger.
When I saw him for the first time, I said, ”This man some day is going to burst. He is using his belly as a balloon. This man cannot make love to a woman.” That is true. Where could you find such an inverted-belly woman? I don’t... I can’t understand. It just seems to be impossible, a puzzle, a koan. This man can make love only if he can find a woman with an inverted belly, so they can fit together.
Obviously, because he cannot do something, he will say to everybody, ”Be celibate.” He is having to suffer, and trying to create the same suffering around him. People enjoy other people’s suffering because that gives them a chance that, ”We are higher than you. Look at us. We are always happy, silent, peaceful.” And the reality is they cannot stand up, they cannot walk.
One very famous mahatma, Shivananda, who had many followers in the West, used to be a doctor. And that a doctor should do such stupid things to himself makes it more difficult to understand. He was eating so much that he could not walk without two persons holding his hands. He even could not raise his hand. His hand was so heavy, so fat, that one person would take one hand, another person would take his other hand and then the small walk would be done.
And he was telling people, ”You have to follow the five great principles of Hinduism. The first is ashwad, no taste.”
What happened to this man? And he was a doctor! I told him, when I went to Rishikesh and saw him, I told him, ”What kind of doctor are you? It seems your certificate is bogus. You can’t even take care of your body; you have become a monster. You cannot raise your own hand, it has become so heavy.”
Everything was out of proportion: a big belly, big fat hands, the legs elephant legs, and this person is teaching the whole world, ”You are not the body, you are the soul.” And who are these monsters? Just bodies, with no soul at all. I can’t see any space in them; they are so filled up with junk that I don’t think they can have a soul also.
What Sekito is saying is absolutely right. There is tremendous truth in small statements.
”WHAT IS THE PURE LAND?”
SEKITO RESPONDED, ”WHO MADE YOU DIRTY?”
You are always pure, that is the Pure Land. Your inner space never has gathered any dirt. That mirror is always clean. No dirt can reach that depth, that invisible beyond.
THE MONK ASKED, ”WHAT IS NIRVANA?”
He is not understanding at all, because the first question is the last question. All these are repetitions of the same thing. Nirvana is nothing but liberation, liberation from all desires, liberation from all attachments, liberation from all bondage. What is nirvana? Liberation from birth, from death.
And Sekito said, ”WHO GAVE YOU BIRTH AND DEATH?” It is you, your desire.
Just try a small experiment. In the night when you are going to sleep, wait, and at the last moment when you think you are just on the verge of falling asleep, just say, ”One.” Go on saying, ”One, one, one...” As you are crossing the border from waking towards sleep, ”One, one, one...” Perhaps two or three times after the boundary is crossed, you may repeat, ”One, one, one...” and then you will be fast asleep. In the morning, watch. As you become aware that you are waking, you will be surprised, you are repeating, ”One, one, one...” Strange! After eight hours of sleep that ‘one’ was continuously being repeated inside you. The last thought when you go to sleep will be the first thought when you wake up. That is an absolutely guaranteed science.
Why am I giving you this example? Because the last thought and desire when you die will be the first desire to enter into a womb. If you die without a desire, without any thought, you will not enter into any womb. Nobody is forcing you into some womb. It is your desire, your last desire when you die. Some ambition, some unfulfillment, some frustration... You wanted to be the prime minister and you missed. You wanted to be the richest man – you missed. You wanted a beautiful woman and you missed. Anything that is the last thing in you will take you into a new womb to fulfill your desire.
Life is very merciful; existence is very compassionate. It gives you chance upon chance, opportunities upon opportunities. If you die meditatively without any desire, then there is no womb for you, no birth, no death. That’s what Sekito is saying. Who has given you birth and death? You yourself. By your desires, by your ambitions you go on perpetuating the circle of birth and death. Stop desiring; that is nirvana, you move from death into the cosmos, not into another womb. To move into the cosmos, to become one with existence, is nirvana. It is also liberation, it is also freedom, it is also pure paradise – different names for one experience.
THE ATTENDANT MONK CAME BACK TO NANGAKU AND REPORTED SEKITO’S ANSWERS. NANGAKU PUT BOTH HANDS TOGETHER AND MADE A GESTURE OF TOUCHING HIS FEET.
Although he was not there, he accepted Sekito as enlightened.
It is a very strange story. One day Sekito came to him with a letter to deliver. They could not find any attunement with each other, and Sekito returned without delivering the letter. That time he was not enlightened. This time on the same mountain where Nangaku had his temple and monastery – and the emperor has given the name to the whole mountain, Nangaku Mountain – on a small hilltop, on a flat stone, Sekito has settled.
After Sekito’s master died, Nangaku heard that Sekito was just sitting on a rock. He wanted to know whether he had become enlightened or not. He must have seen that very day when he had come as a disciple of Seigen, he must have seen the man, his strength and his power; he had asked a question and Nangaku had said, ”Your question is very arrogant. You should ask in a humble way.”
And Sekito had said to him, ”I would rather fall into eternal hellfire but I will not ask the question in any other way.” And he had returned directly, a man of steel. Nangaku was a famous master. When he heard these answers from the monk, he folded his hands, and bowed down; he recognized that that fellow Sekito had become enlightened. These answers cannot be given by any scholar. They cannot be borrowed knowledge. They can only arise as an experience.
AT THAT TIME, KENGO, RAN AND NANGAKU WERE THOUGHT TO BE THE THREE MASTERS IN THE COUNTRY, AND ALL THREE OF THEM SAID, ”FROM THE STONE-HEAD COMES THE LION’S ROAR TO MY EAR.”
Because he was sitting on a stone with a shaved head he became known as Stonehead Sekito. All three masters were staying by chance in Nangaku’s monastery. And they all three said, ”FROM THE STONE-HEAD COMES THE LION’S ROAR TO MY EAR. He is sitting far away, but I can hear the lion’s roar.”
THE MONK WENT BACK TO SEKITO AND SAID THAT, IF THERE WERE ANYTHING THE MONK COULD DO FOR HIM, TO LET HIM KNOW. A LITTLE LATER, THE MASTER, NANGAKU, CAME WITH THE MONKS TO SEE SEKITO.
It is a strange phenomenon. Once, Sekito had gone as a disciple to Nangaku. Things have changed completely, now Nangaku comes to pay his respects to Sekito.
SEKITO STOOD UP TO RECEIVE HIM, AND THE TWO GREETED EACH OTHER. LATER, NANGAKU HAD A TEMPLE BUILT FOR SEKITO’S CONVENIENCE.
Zen gives a totally different taste – no competition. Nangaku made a temple for Sekito on his mountain for his convenience and took care of him. A monk used to come to ask him if he needed anything. But soon thousands of people started coming to Sekito. He became one of the greatest masters of Zen. He was a very straightforward man, not a philosopher or a theologian; his answers were very simple, but absolutely to the point. His sword was very sharp, and just in one blow he used to cut people’s whole intellect, their whole mind. He helped many people to become enlightened. Very few masters can claim that they have made so many people enlightened as Sekito.
Chinejo wrote:
SUDDENLY LIGHT
SUDDENLY DARK –
I AM A FIREFLY TOO.
You have seen the firefly. It goes on... as it opens its wings, you see the light, as it closes its wings, there is darkness.
SUDDENLY LIGHT,
SUDDENLY DARK –
I AM A FIREFLY TOO.
Chinejo must have been meditating deep into the night. And the silence of the night and many fireflies moving around, sometimes dark, sometimes light, sometimes dark, sometimes light, suddenly he became so attuned to the fireflies that he said, ”I AM A FIREFLY TOO. Sometimes I am ignorant and sometimes I am awakened. Sometimes all is dark and sometimes everything becomes light.”
Every buddha in his past was as ignorant as you are; and everybody who is ignorant has a future. Any day suddenly, light; and in that light all the past, maybe millions of years, disappear like dreams. Buddha used to measure people’s age from the time they became enlightened. He did not count the previous age.
One day, a great emperor of those days, Prasenjita, was sitting by the side of Buddha asking him questions. And an old monk – he may have been seventy-five years old at least – asked Prasenjita, ”Forgive me please. I have been waiting because I have to leave before sunset. I have to reach the other village” – a buddhist monk cannot travel in the night – ”so I am in a hurry. I have to disturb you just for a moment, just to touch Buddha’s feet and ask if there is any message. I may not be seeing him again and who knows about tomorrow?” So he touched the Buddha’s feet and Buddha asked, ”How old are you?”
And the old man said, ”Four years.”
Prasenjita could not believe that and could not resist the temptation either to interfere. He said, ”What? Four years? You must be at least seventy-five.”
Buddha said, ”Prasenjita, you don’t know. In my commune we count only those years which he has lived as an enlightened being. Before that was just darkness and dreams, nightmares, misery, not worth counting. You are right, he is seventy-five years old according to the ordinary world, but this is not an ordinary world. He is living in an extraordinary commune. As far as I am concerned he is four years old. I was just asking him whether he remembers or not. He remembers. He knows what is real life – only four years. And the seventy-one years were just fake, they do not matter, have no meaning at all. There is no need to count them.”
Buddha said, ”With my blessings you can go because your remembrance is correct.”
God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth 101 ♡♥Osho♡♥
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