The Mysterious Source Is Clear And Bright

THE MIND OF THE GREAT SAGE OF INDIA WAS INTIMATELY COMMUNICATED FROM INDIA TO CHINA.

It was intimately communicated because a man of the same height as Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma, went to China, full of the light, full of the joy, full of the ecstasy. His spring had come. He went to China as the awakened one. That’s why the word ‘intimate’ is used.

It was not transferred, because before Bodhidharma reached China thousands of Buddhist scholars had reached China. Hundreds of Buddhist scriptures were translated into Chinese. Almost the whole of China had already become Buddhist before Bodhidharma reached it. But none of those were awakened ones. They were great scholars who had gone and translated...

And the scriptures were beautiful. China had nothing compared to it. It had only one book written by Lao Tzu on Tao, but that too does not come to the height of Gautam Buddha’s sutras, because it was a written book, and written under force, compulsion.

He had never written in his whole life, and he never spoke. People used to sit by his side in silence, and if something happened in the silence, good. If nothing happened, ”What can I do?” That was his answer. A few people became enlightened, but very few. One Chuang Tzu, one Lieh Tzu – just two persons became enlightened sitting silently by the side of Lao Tzu. To understand silence is not easy, you have to reach to that same depth. Otherwise you may be sitting by the side of Lao Tzu, but your mind will be going in circles, a continuous rush of thoughts. You may be silent from the outside, but inside there is too much talk going on.

When for the first time talking movies came into existence... before that there were silent movies. The first name that was given to the talking movies was ”talky.” And in India the movie house is still called the talkies.

In your mind that ”talky” is continuously going on. Whether you want it or not, that does not matter. In spite of you, it is continuously there.

So although thousands of Buddhist scholars had reached China and the whole country had been converted to Buddhism, the emperor of China had been converted to Buddhism, nobody had given the taste; it was not an intimate phenomenon. It became intimate only when Bodhidharma reached China.

Now a buddha himself has reached China, a different body but the same consciousness, a different body but the same height and the same depth. It is perfectly good of Sekito to call it an intimate communication from India to China.

IN HUMAN BEINGS THERE ARE WISE MEN AND FOOLS, BUT ON THE WAY THERE IS NO NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN TEACHER.

Neither teachers from India nor teachers from China are of any help on the way. You need a master, you need an intimate communion with the master, not a teaching.

You don’t need a teacher in the real religious world, you need a master. You need a buddha who has already arrived, and who can provoke you, challenge you to come. A buddha is nothing but a clarion call to everybody: Whoever wants to know can come close. The master has arrived, the teacher has only heard, he has no individual intimate experience of the truth.

So in the ordinary world there are wise people and there are ”otherwise” people, but on the path neither the wise are of any help, nor the otherwise. On the path you need someone who has gone beyond mind, beyond wisdom, beyond foolishness, who has gone beyond intellect and beyond retardedness, who has simply moved into the silence of the beyond. You need someone who has found the truth. Just in his finding the truth, he has become a radiation. Around him there is a field of energy which can penetrate you, which can wake you up.

THE MYSTERIOUS SOURCE IS CLEAR AND BRIGHT, THE BRANCHING STREAMS FLOW THROUGH THE DARKNESS.

As far as the master is concerned, THE MYSTERIOUS SOURCE IS CLEAR AND BRIGHT, THE BRANCHING STREAMS FLOW THROUGH THE DARKNESS. But the moment the master speaks, his words start moving towards darkness. By the time they reach to you, they are streams flowing in darkness, branches moving towards darkness. You have to come into deep intimacy with the master, so you can share his brightness, his clearness, his clarity, his transparency. If you only hear his words and note down those words, you are already going wrong. The master does not consist of words. He may use words to call you closer. The master consists only of absolute silence, pure silence.

TO BE ATTACHED TO THE RELATIVE, THIS IS ILLUSION...

The whole world is relative. Albert Einstein was not the only one to bring the word ‘relativity’ into the world. Long before him mystics in different lands had found that everything outside is relative.

That has created a problem for the philosophers, but not for the mystics. Philosophers have heard the mystics say that everything outside is relative, and whatever is relative is illusory. Why is it illusory? It is a little bit subtle, but you have to understand it.

You think yourself homely when you see a beautiful woman; you see a tall man and you feel small. But your smallness is relative. Until the tall man came, you were perfectly okay, there was no problem. You were not worried about your smallness.

In India there is a saying that the camels never like to go to the mountains. They love deserts where they are the mountains. They live in the desert, they don’t like mountains at all, because a mountain makes them feel very inferior.

It is very psychological. Why do you feel that you are small, unworthy, that you don’t deserve any respect, that you are a sinner? These are all relative things; that you are beautiful, that you are very educated... these are all relative. Anything relative is illusory, illusory in the sense that if you don’t compare, you are yourself, somebody else is himself. What does it matter if he is tall? What does it matter if you are small? Both of your feet reach to the earth just as the tall man’s feet reach to the earth. It is not that you are small and dangling in the air. What is the problem? Comparison creates relative illusions.

Trees are not worried. The rose bush is small, and the cedar goes two hundred feet high. Neither is the rose bush worried why the cedar is so tall, nor is the cedar worried why the rose bush has such beautiful flowers. A rose bush is a rose bush, a cedar is a cedar.

One Zen master was asked, ”Why are we miserable?” He said, ”Look at the cypress tree in the courtyard.”

The questioner looked at the courtyard and the cypress tree. He said, ”But I don’t understand.”

The master said, ”Look again. By the side of the cypress there is a rose bush. I have never heard the rose bush complaining, ‘Why am I small?’ And I have never heard the cypress tree complain, ‘Why do no roses blossom? And I have gone so far up in search of the roses – two hundred feet – and no roses? What kind of justice is this?’

”No, there is no quarrel. I go every day in the morning – sometimes at dusk, sometimes in the night – just to see whether they are quarreling or having a dialogue and discussion. There is absolute silence, both are satisfied as they are, because no comparison is arising, no relative idea of inferiority or superiority is arising.”

The relative is called illusory because it is your creation, it does not exist anywhere. Otherwise you would go mad. You are passing by the side of beautiful trees, and you could start thinking, ”Why am I not green?” You don’t do it, because you are not that neurotic yet. Because you don’t compare, there is no problem.

But you pass by a woman who is beautiful, and if you are a woman, immediately the comparison, anger, jealousy. But what is the problem? She has just a little longer nose. And what will you do with a long nose?

In the dark every woman is the same. Just put the light off! That is why people make love... First they put the light off, then every woman is a Sophia Loren. What is the difference? The same skeleton, the same bones, the same blood, the same mucus, the same deodorant, the same perspiration, the same huffing and puffing.

Darkness has a great quality. It makes everybody equal. Who cares? In darkness you can make love to the ugliest woman, thinking she is Cleopatra.

I have heard about a drunkard who was brought to the court because he was making love on the beach to a dead woman. The drunkard stumbled into the court, and the judge asked, ”Can’t you tell the difference between dead and alive?”

The drunkard said, ”I can.”

”Then why were you making love to that dead woman on the beach?”
He said, ”I thought she was English. I never thought she was dead.”

Ladies behave as dead. That is the difference between a lady and a woman. A real woman will groan and moan and beat you. She will go crazy and scream and wake up the whole neighborhood – that is a real woman. The lady is just a good lay, silent, just like a Japanese doll. You lay the doll down, she closes her eyes; you put the doll back, she opens her eyes. A good lady is just a doll, cultured, sophisticated, snobbish.

So the poor drunkard was not wrong. I am a hundred percent in favor of the poor drunkard. I don’t want ladies in the world at all. The world needs real men, real women. And who cares about the neighborhood? They can celebrate if they want.

Whenever you compare, the very comparison brings you into an illusory space.

... BUT TO TAKE TO ONESELF THE ABSOLUTE IS NOT ENLIGHTENMENT.

That’s what philosophers have been moving into. They think the world is illusory, so God is the absolute, non-relative, beyond relativeness. The world is relative, changing moment-to-moment, nothing is permanent, nothing is stable, it is flux. God is absolute. The absolute is another name

or God. He never changes, he is the same, always the same, from eternity to eternity. This is the philosopher’s idea: because of an illusory world he creates the extreme opposite of an absolute God.

One of my professors, S.S. Roy, who is now a retired professor, an old man, loved me very much. It was because of him that I entered the university where he was a professor. He was continuously persuading me... I was in another university, but I used to go for debates, discussions, eloquence competitions to the university where S.S. Roy was a professor.

And the very first time, at first sight, he fell in love with me. He was a judge – there were three judges – and he gave me ninety-nine out of a hundred marks, and I came first. I won the shield and as I was leaving with the shield, he came by my side and he said, ”Wait. I have to apologize to you.”

I said, ”For what?”

He said, ”I wanted to give you a hundred percent, but feeling that people would think I was being favorable to you, I cut one number. I gave you ninety-nine percent. Please forgive me. I wanted to give you... but I could not be that strong. I knew that other professors would say that I was being too favorable.”

I said, ”There is no harm. I won the shield anyway, and others have also given good marks. Somebody has given eighty percent, somebody else has given eighty-five percent. So there is no problem. The people are far below – the other competitors – so your not giving me one mark makes no difference.”

He said, ”It does not make any difference to you, but it makes a difference to me because I went against myself. I wanted to give you a hundred percent.”

I said, ”Next time. I will be coming again and again,” because I was going to all the universities, to all the colleges, wherever there was any competition for eloquence or for debate.

And it was only one time that I got the second prize. Otherwise I had hundreds of prizes, always first. The day I got the second prize, the whole audience of the university could not believe it. And I had to stand up. I told the vice chancellor, who was presiding, ”I know why I have got the second prize, and you must be puzzling yourself also.” A girl had got the first prize. So I said, ”I have to be absolutely clear about the matter, because I know what happened.

”One of the professors, who is the judge, is in love with the girl, and he has given too many marks to her. The other two judges had no idea. They have both given me the highest marks, but that man has given her so much that she has come just one mark ahead.” And I said, ”You have to ask the professor because I know they have both been walking in the park together at night.

”The park is in front of my house, so I know perfectly well. And I can produce witnesses, because all the gardeners in the park know that these two people come late at night when the park is closed. They bribe the gardeners and enter the park, because that is the safest place in the night.”

The girl and the professor both started perspiring. I said, ”Look at their perspiration! Nobody in this whole hall” – there were at least a thousand people – ”is perspiring. Only these two people. Why are they perspiring?” I said, ”Stand up!” I said it so loudly that even the professor stood up.

And the vice-chancellor said, ”You are creating such trouble, but I can understand.”

I said, ”You have to cancel this whole debate; it has to be done again, and this man has not to be a judge.”

He felt so ashamed that he resigned from the college that very night and escaped from the town. After twenty years I came across him in a train. I said, ”Hello.”

He said, ”My God! I wanted never to see you again.”

I said, ”Life is mysterious. Where is the girl?”

He said, ”You have not forgotten yet?”

I said, ”I have neither forgotten, nor have I forgiven. Where is the girl?”

He said, ”That girl, because of you, deserted me! She became so ashamed that she stopped meeting me.”

I said, ”That’s great! Now I forgive you and I will forget you. I wanted to finish that relationship because you were doing an injustice to me. You thought I would remain silent.”

And from that day every judge was aware not to do anything, because, ”This man seems to be strange.” Everybody felt that it was an absolute injustice. The girl was not even worth being fourth!

And S.S. Roy became interested in me, because I had spoken up. He loved it, and he said, ”I will arrange every facility for you, a scholarship, whatever you want I will arrange; you just change university. I want you to be my student.”

He was a professor of philosophy. So I changed university, and he was a very well-known scholar, particularly on Shankara, whose whole philosophy is that the world is illusion and God is the absolute truth, and on Bradley, an English philosopher, whose philosophy is the same: the world is illusory and God is the absolute truth. He had his doctoral thesis on Shankara and Bradley.

And the very first day I entered his class... He had invited me, but he had not been aware that he was inviting trouble. He was talking about illusion and the absolute, the world and God, and I told him, ”If God is unchanging, he must be dead. Any living thing cannot be unchanging. You show me any living thing in the whole world – every living thing is moving, growing, going. It is a constant flux. Life is a flux. If God is alive, it is not possible that he can remain stable, the same forever. Then how will you differentiate between a dead god and a living god?

”Just tell me. Both are sitting in front of you, the living god, the dead god. Neither the dead god changes nor the living god changes. How will you find who is the living God?”

He said, ”My God! I have got a doctoral degree on my thesis, but I never thought about this.”

I said, ”The very word ‘absolute’ is a reaction. First you call the world illusory, which it is not. You know perfectly well, you don’t enter into just anybody’s house. If it is illusory, what does it matter?

Why do you go on entering your own house every day? What does it matter? You can enter somebody else’s house.”

He said, ”Your philosophical discussion is dangerous. I have discussed problems, but you are telling me to enter somebody else’s house?”

I said, ”Yes, because if it is illusory, all dream, what does it matter whether it is your wife or somebody else’s wife? Whether they are your children or somebody else’s children, all is illusory. And your God is only a philosophical concept: because the world is changing, God has to be unchanging. But it is only logic. If there is a God he has to be changing, otherwise he will be dead.”

And I told him that day, the first day of my encountering his class, ”God is certainly dead, that’s why he is not changing.”

But this absolute idea of God is only a philosophical concept, that’s why Sekito says: ”TO BE ATTACHED TO THE RELATIVE, THIS IS ILLUSION...”

He is not saying that the world is illusion: to be attached to this world is illusion. Remain unattached, the world is perfectly real. Attachment is illusion, not the world; not the woman but the attachment, not the money but the attachment, not the body but the attachment.

Sekito is making a tremendously significant statement. No philosopher has said that. They say the world is illusory. He is making a distinction: not the world, but the attachment to the world, to the relative, is illusory. And because of this, philosophers have moved to the other extreme: God is not illusory, he is the most real, the absolutely real.

And Sekito immediately counters these philosophers. He says,
”... BUT TO TAKE TO ONESELF THE ABSOLUTE IS NOT ENLIGHTENMENT.”

Don’t think in terms of absolute. There is nothing absolute, everything is always becoming absolute, but it is becoming and becoming and becoming, and it never comes to a full stop, because a full stop will be dead. The day existence comes to perfection, there is nowhere to go, a full stop. Perfection is death. To be absolute is to be dead.

Sekito is saying something which only a mystic, only a buddha can say, ”Even the experience of buddhahood goes on growing. There are no limits to its growth. It is not that once you have become a buddha you have come to the full point. No, the path is endless, the journey is infinite, the pilgrimage goes on and on and on. And that is the beauty of existence, that nothing comes to an end. Everything goes on moving eternally.”

So the concept of the absolute is the concept of the philosophers, not of those who are enlightened.

EACH AND ALL THE ELEMENTS OF THE SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE SPHERES ARE RELATED, AND AT THE SAME TIME INDEPENDENT...

He is saying, the outer world and the inner world are both independent but related, because their functions are different. They are related because they cannot exist separately. The outer cannot exist without the inner, the inner cannot exist without the outer, so they are related. But their functions are different: the outer is moving towards the objects, and the inner is moving towards subjectivity. Their directions are different, their realizations are different, but they are related at a point.

He is making immensely significant statements which will be clear to you only when you stand at your very center – absolutely clear, no dust in your eyes – and you see the objective world has a beauty of its own, a reality of its own, a life of its own, a hidden consciousness of its own, just as the inner has its own stars, its own sky, its own expanse, its own universe. Outside you there is an infinite universe, inside you also there is an infinite universe. Both are related, both are dependent on each other, but their functions are different.

If you move on the outer line, you will find yourself becoming more and more scientific. If you move on the inner line, you will find yourself becoming more and more a mystic.

RELATED YET WORKING DIFFERENTLY, THOUGH EACH KEEPS ITS OWN PLACE.

FORM MAKES THE CHARACTER AND APPEARANCE DIFFERENT; SOUND, TASTE, SMELL, DISTINGUISH COMFORT AND DISCOMFORT.

THE DARK MAKES ALL THINGS ONE; THE BRIGHTNESS MAKES ALL THINGS DIFFERENT.

But it is only appearance. In darkness you cannot see, hence everything seems to be one. In light you can see, hence everything seems to be separate. But these separate things in their deepest roots are joined. We are all joined to one center of the universe. As branches, as leaves, we are separate, but as we go deeper into the roots, all the branches, all the leaves, all the flowers are getting the nourishment from the same roots. Existence nourishes you and the trees and the mountains and the birds equally.

So it is a mystery that one existence manifests in so many ways. This variety of expression makes life beautiful. This variety makes life unboring. The variety is a richness, but this oneness makes life equal. Nobody is inferior, nobody is superior, hence there is no need of any comparison.

THE FOUR ELEMENTS RETURN TO THEIR NATURE, AS A CHILD TO ITS MOTHER.

That’s what I have been telling you. When the source of life also becomes the goal of life, the circle is complete. And whenever the circle is complete, you don’t have to move unnecessarily into birth and death, and again birth, and again death. You have been moving into this wheel of birth and death for millions of years. It is time to jump out of the circle. This very jumping out of the circle is enlightenment.

FIRE IS HOT, WIND MOVES, WATER IS WET, EARTH HARD. EYES SEE, EARS HEAR; THE NOSE SMELLS, THE TONGUE TASTES, ONE SALT, ANOTHER SOUR. EACH IS INDEPENDENT OF THE OTHER, BUT THE DIFFERENT LEAVES COME FROM THE SAME ROOT.

You taste from your tongue, you see from your eyes, you touch from your hand. All your senses are different: you cannot see by your hand, and you cannot taste by your eyes, and you cannot smell by your ears. They are all separate, but they are all joined in one brain from where they come like separate branches. They all feed the same brain, and the same brain nourishes them.

Whatever hands bring from touch reaches to the same brain. Whatever noses bring from fragrances reaches to the same brain. Eyes bring their survey of the world to the same brain. These senses are just branches spreading in different directions, to collect different experiences, and to make the brain richer.

But they are all rooted in one brain.

He is just giving an example. We are all separate, independent, but we are rooted in the same existence. We should be independent, we should be individuals, but we should not forget that finally we are one, waves of the same ocean.

Basho wrote:

WHAT HAPPINESS,
CROSSING THIS SUMMER RIVER,
SANDALS IN HAND!

A man who is enlightened, everything to him becomes a mystery. Now such a small thing! You will say, ”What is there?”

WHAT HAPPINESS,
CROSSING THIS SUMMER RIVER,
SANDALS IN HAND!

You will say, ”There is nothing in it. Sandals in hand? The summer river must have become very shallow. What is there to be happy about?”

But that is the very point of Zen, you don’t have any reason to be happy; even this, crossing the summer river, sandals in hand, what happiness!

Any act or no act, doing or no doing, becomes utterly blissful. It does not have to be caused by something. When your happiness is caused, you become attached to the cause, because you are afraid that if you lose the cause your happiness will disappear. If you are happy with a woman or with a man, you become attached; not only attached, you start creating prisons for each other, because without this woman, without this man, you cannot be happy. So your happiness turns into misery for both.

Meditation brings you a great experience that happiness need not be caused, and when you have found a happiness which is not caused by anything, you are simply happy – just to be is to be happy – then you don’t create any prisons for anybody. Then you don’t possess anybody, and you don’t destroy anybody’s dignity as a human being. You don’t enslave people. You love, you share, just because of your abundance, not that you want anything in return. Without your asking, much comes to you. The moment you start asking, you have lost the very ground of being happy.

Hence, I have been contradicting Jesus’ statement. He says, ”Seek and ye shall find,” and I say unto you, ”DON’T seek and ye shall find.” Jesus says, ”Ask, and ye shall be answered,” and I say unto you, ”Don’t ask, and you are the answer.” Jesus says, ”Knock, and the doors shall be opened unto you.” I say to you, ”There is no need to knock, the doors are already open. They have always been open, just open your eyes!”

God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth 131 ♡♥Osho♡♥