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ENERGY
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GAIN ENERGY
APPRENTICE
LEVEL1
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THE
ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL
PROCESS
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THE
KARMA CLEARING
PROCESS
APPRENTICE
LEVEL3
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MASTERY
OF RELATIONSHIPS
TANTRA
APPRENTICE
LEVEL4
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2005 AND 2006
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ChristianityVOL. 4, COME FOLLOW YOURSELFChapter-8The whole Sky belongs to YouThird Question
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The third question: Question 3 WHEN I WORKED WITH GURDJIEFF PEOPLE, THEY TOLD ME TO MAKE AN EFFORT, STRUGGLE, WORK. WHEN I WORKED WITH BUDDHIST MASTERS, THEY TOLD ME NOT TO TO, JUST SIT. YOU SAY BOTH. I FIND THAT AT TIMES I'M CONFUSED. Yes. I say both, and I can understand your confusion. Gurdjieff follows the path of will. He says,'Bring tremendous effort -- to the very climax, so that you can become crystallized. Struggle hard, make all the efforts that you can.' If you go to Zen Masters, Buddhists, they believe in effortlessness, they believe in surrender. They don't believe in struggle. They say,'Drop all efforts. Just sit silently, don't do anything: non-doing. Someday it will happen; because it cannot be done, it happens.' Both are clear-cut. If you follow Gurdjieff, you are against Zen people. If you follow Zen, you are against Gurdjieff. Things are clear-cut, logical. With me, confusion is bound to be there, because I say both. I say work hard. I say bring your total energy into effort so that one day effort can be dropped and you can become effortless. To me, will brings you to Surrender, and effort brings you to effortlessness. Let me give you a few examples, then it will be possible for you to understand. Lin Chi, a great Zen Master, worked with his own Master for years. The Master taught him painting; through painting he was teaching him meditation. For twelve years, Lin Chi worked. Then he became perfect, he became the greatest painter. Then the Master said,'Now, your effort is complete. Now throw these brushes, these colors, these paintings, and forget all about painting.' Twelve years' effort, day and night; and this Master was a hard taskmaster. After such effort, arduous hardship, something had been attained; and then the Master said,'Throw it away.' The Master has to be followed; Lin Chi threw the brushes, the ink, the paintings, and forgot all about it. Six years passed and then the Master said,'Now you can start painting.' Lin Chi asked,'What is the meaning of it?' The Master said,'Now you have attained to effortless effort.' First, one has to learn effort. Then one has to learn effortlessness. If in your art your art is present, then it is not great art. If you paint and effort is present, you are not a great master yet because the very effort shows that you are not one when you are painting. If you sing and in singing effort is present, then you are not a great singer. You are still trying hard to prove something. When you have really become a great singer, effort drops; you sing spontaneously. Your singing becomes like the singing of the birds; your singing becomes spontaneous. The great musician is one who can touch, who can play on his organ not knowing what he is going to do. He himself is surprised when something happens. Not only is the audience the audience, he himself is part of the audience. The great master becomes a vehicle, surrendered. But to attain to that surrender, you have to purify yourself. Tremendous effort is needed before you can become capable of dropping it. If you want to offer your will to God -- that is what surrender is -- first make it worthy. With ugly egos, stinking, you go to God and you want to offer it. Go with flowers. Let yourself become a flower, a fragrance first, and then.... If you just go and sit what do you think -- that something is going to happen? Nothing will happen; the market will go on moving in the mind. You can -go on sitting like a statue, dead. When Bokuju reached his Master, the Master asked,'For what have you come?' He said,'Get out! We have one thousand dead Buddhas already here.' Because he used to live in a temple which had one thousand stone Buddhas. He said,'Get out immediately! The place is already much too crowded with Buddhas. We don't need any more.' What was he saying? He was saying,'You will be a stone Buddha if you just sit.' You can learn the posture, you can learn the trick of sitting for hours, but what will happen to your mind? You may be sitting in a temple but you will not be there, you will be somewhere else. You are always there where your desire is. To drop effort, you will have to learn what effort is. Gurdjieff is the beginning; Zen is the end. Gurdjieff is the ABCD; Zen is the XYZ. You can reach to Zen only if you have passed Gurdjieff. If you try to reach directly to Zen, you will never reach. This is what is happening in the West now. Zen has been absolutely misunderstood. Go to Japan and see the Japanese monasteries: a Zen monk has to work hard for twenty years, twenty-four years, even thirty years. He has to meditate six hours, eight hours, ten hours, twelve hours, even eighteen hours per day. Then comes a moment when the Master says,'Now relax.' Only at the peak is relaxation allowed. In the West, Zen has been very, very misunderstood. It is very easy to misunderstand Zen because the language is so poetic. The language is so paradoxical that in the West, a hippie-type Zen has come into existence.'There is nothing to do,' Zen people say. There is nowhere to go,' Zen people say. It fits perfectly with your laziness. You sit, you be lazy; not doing anything, not going anywhere -- you will not become a Buddha. Buddha himself worked hard for six years in his last life. If you count his past lives, then for millions of lives he had been working hard. But in his last life, when he became enlightened, he also worked very hard. Then one day he dropped -- he became enlightened. When people asked,'How did you attain?' he said,'By dropping all effort.' He's true, but he can be misunderstood. First, you need effort to drop it one day. You don't have effort yet; how can you drop it? If you want to sit silently, you will have to run for miles and miles, and only then can you sit silently. To drop thinking you will have to think for miles and miles and miles; only then can you understand the futility of it all. In that understanding, thinking stops. So I may appear confusing to you; that is your misunderstanding. I am simply making it a whole. Gurdjieff is half -- just technique, just work. Zen is also misunderstood and has become half because of the misunderstanding -- doing nothing. I teach you to do, to do much, so that one day you can attain to the flower of non-doing. You can simply sit not doing anything, not even meditating. There is the reality -- when you are not doing anything and all the ripples of the mind have subsided, and your whole being is simply silent. This is not laziness. This is tremendous energy; unmotivated, not going anywhere. It is a reservoir of energy, not laziness. You are full of energy, tremendously at the peak of energy, but not going anywhere because there is no goal to reach, nothing to achieve, no desire left. Not even is God a desire now. Not even is MOKSHA, NIRVANA, the final attainment, a desire now. All desires have left; one is sitting at home. In that moment, the whole comes to you. The whole existence caves in upon you from every direction and every dimension. You are accepted. You become a.lotus flower. Without any effort, you just float on the water. The water does not touch you, cannot touch you. You remain in the world and not of the world. I teach you both effort and effortlessness, because unless you attain to effortless-effort, unless you attain to active passivity, unless you attain to a singing-silence -- they look paradoxical -- unless you attain to an unmoving dance, you have not attained. So please don't misinterpret it as confusion. What I am saying to you is a mystery. If you look at it logically, it will look like confusion. If you look at it through love, it will look a mystery. It is a mystery; you only need to have a look through love. Then you will immediately understand, and then you will connect the polarity, and you will see that much activity is needed to attain to passivity. |
Next: Chapter 8, The whole Sky belongs to You, Fourth Question
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Christianity Come Follow Yourself
Chapter 7
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