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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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Chapter 9: Dead men don't bleed
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Bodhidharma
BELOVED OSHO,
BODHIDHARMA'S WAKE-UP SERMON.
THE ESSENCE OF THE WAY IS DETACHMENT. AND THE GOAL OF THOSE WHO PRACTICE IS FREEDOM FROM APPEARANCES. THE SUTRAS SAY, "DETACHMENT IS ENLIGHTENMENT BECAUSE IT NEGATES APPEARANCES." ...THE THREE REALMS ARE GREED, ANGER AND DELUSION. TO LEAVE THE THREE REALMS MEANS TO GO FROM GREED, ANGER AND DELUSION BACK TO MORTALITY, MEDITATION AND WISDOM. THE SUTRAS SAY, "BUDDHAS HAVE ONLY BECOME BUDDHAS WHILE LIVING WITH THE THREE POISONS AND NOURISHING THEMSELVES ON THE PURE DHARMA." THE THREE POISONS ARE GREED, ANGER AND DELUSION ....
THE GREAT VEHICLE IS THE GREATEST OF ALL VEHICLES. IT'S THE CONVEYANCE OF BODHISATTVAS, WHO USE EVERYTHING WITHOUT USING ANYTHING, AND WHO TRAVEL ALL DAY WITHOUT TRAVELLING. SUCH IS THE VEHICLE OF BUDDHAS. THE SUTRAS SAY, "NO VEHICLE IS THE VEHICLE OF BUDDHAS." ...THE SUTRAS SAY, "THE CAVE OF FIVE AGGREGATES IS THE HALL OF ZEN, THE OPENING OF THE INNER EYE IS THE DOOR OF THE GREAT VEHICLE." WHAT COULD BE CLEARER?
NOT THINKING ABOUT ANYTHING IS ZEN. ONCE YOU KNOW THIS, WALKING, STANDING, SITTING OR LYING DOWN, EVERYTHING YOU DO IS ZEN. TO KNOW THAT THE MIND IS EMPTY IS TO SEE THE BUDDHA. THE BUDDHAS OF THE TEN DIRECTIONS HAVE NO MIND. TO SEE NO MIND IS TO SEE THE BUDDHA.
TO GIVE UP YOURSELF WITHOUT REGRET IS THE GREATEST CHARITY. TO TRANSCEND MOTION AND STILLNESS IS THE HIGHEST MEDITATION. MORTALS KEEP MOVING WHILE ARHATS STAY STILL. BUT THE HIGHEST MEDITATION SURPASSES THAT OF BOTH MORTALS AND ARHATS. PEOPLE WHO REACH SUCH UNDERSTANDING FREE THEMSELVES FROM ALL APPEARANCES WITHOUT EFFORT AND CURE ALL ILLNESSES WITHOUT TREATMENT. SUCH IS THE POWER OF GREAT ZEN.
Bodhidharma is more clear and transparent than any other enlightened person. But the experience of enlightenment is such that you can still commit mistakes. This is something to be understood. People ordinarily think that the man of enlightenment cannot commit mistakes. That is their expectation, but it is not true to reality.
The same has been the expectation of other religions, that their prophets cannot commit mistakes. Although the KORAN is full of mistakes, Mohammedans are not ready to accept that their prophet Mohammed can commit any mistake. THE BIBLE is so full of mistakes, but still the popes go on declaring for twenty centuries continuously that they are infallible. And their fallibility is so apparent.
Just as an example, Joan of Arc was declared a witch by the pope of that time. And the pope defined a witch -- which is not the meaning of the word "witch" -- as someone who has sexual intercourse with the devil. The meaning of the word "witch" is a wise woman. And it has always been the meaning up to the Middle Ages, when the popes started declaring wise women as being in the grip of the devil. It was easy; first they would torture those women to such an extent that it became unbearable. Day after day they were tortured.
Finally the woman had to accept that yes, she is a witch. That was the only way to stop her being tortured. And once she accepted and confessed that she was a witch, she had to go to the court -- a special court appointed by the pope -- to declare that she has been having intercourse with the devil, which is sheer nonsense, because never before had it been known, and never afterwards -- nobody has seen the devil. And these poor women were having intercourse with the devil, and they had to describe the whole ugly thing in every detail. And once they confessed, the court ordered them to be burned alive. Thousands of women in Europe were in danger and thousands had already been burned alive.
Joan of Arc fought for the freedom of her country. She was a young woman of tremendous courage and she won freedom for the country. Hence, there was immense respect for Joan of Arc. And the jealous pope could not allow Joan of Arc to be left alone. It became a competition -- who is more respectable, Joan of Arc or the pope. The easiest way was to declare her a witch. He declared her a witch and they tortured the poor young woman until finally she had to accept. There was no way out and she was burned alive.
But this created a very different result than that expected by the pope. He fell more in people's eyes, and Joan of Arc became a martyr. She was loved more, she gained more sympathy. People almost started worshiping her. So after three hundred years another pope realized that it had been a mistake on the part of the previous pope. He had unnecessarily created a martyr; he should have been more careful. It was easy to destroy ordinary women but to destroy a woman like Joan of Arc ...he had not been cautious enough.
After three hundred years, another pope declared that Joan of Arc was not a witch, she was a saint, and her bones were dragged out of the grave and worshiped. A great memorial was made, because now she had become "Saint Joan of Arc." You can see, at least one of the popes was fallible -- most probably both. But one thing is certain: both cannot be right. And the popes are not enlightened people; they know nothing of enlightenment.
The East has been very concerned for ten thousand years with the phenomenon of enlightenment. It certainly brings you great light, great clarity, great ecstasy and the feeling of immortality. But even though it brings so much, existence is so vast that your enlightenment is just a dewdrop in the ocean of existence. However transparent and clear your understanding may be, there is always a possibility to commit mistakes. And this has been recognized by the East.
Even Gautam Buddha is reported to have said that existence is so vast, so infinite in all dimensions, that even an enlightened man may commit mistakes. This is true religiousness and humbleness.
The idea of infallibility is nothing but ugly ego.
Hence, when I say that Bodhidharma has missed the point, don't misunderstand me. Don't start thinking that Bodhidharma is not enlightened. There is no contradiction. He IS enlightened -- one of the greatest enlightened people on the earth. But enlightenment makes you blossom, come to spring with your whole potentiality becoming actual; it does not mean that you become incapable of committing any mistake.
In fact the enlightened man becomes so humble that if you point out his mistakes he will accept them. He is so detached from his own personality, it does not matter. He has no ego; he is not hurt. And he accepts that there are possibilities where he may become too one-sided, may lean into this multidimensional existence more towards certain dimensions, may become averse to the dimensions which are against his own experiences and feelings. Existence contains all contradictions, and even at the highest point of enlightenment it is very difficult to contain contradictions.
Man, after all, is man, asleep or awake. It is very difficult to conceive contradictions existing together not as contradictions but as complementaries. The easier thing seems to be to choose one side and go against the other. But that does not mean that the enlightenment is not complete; it simply means even an enlightened man can have a partiality. And it is because of the vastness of the universe.
When Gautam Buddha was asked .... He was a contemporary of Mahavira, and the followers of Mahavira were saying about Mahavira that he knows past, present, future; that he knows all that has ever been, that is and that will ever be. They were making him synonymous to the idea of God -- omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. And it is worth remembering that Gautam Buddha laughed. He said, "I have heard once that Mahavira was begging before a house where nobody has lived for a long time, and there was nobody inside the house. And the people say that he knows everything of the past, of the present, of the future, and he does not know that he is standing before a house and there is nobody in the house!"
And Gautam Buddha joked about Mahavira that once he had heard Mahavira was walking early in the morning .... It was in the hot summer, so he had started to move very early, before the sunrise, and he stepped on the tail of a dog. When the dog started barking, then he became aware that there was a dog. The darkness was there .... This man knows past, present and future and he does not know the tail of a dog is under his foot. And I certainly agree with Gautam Buddha.
Mahavira never claimed this -- it was the claim of his disciples. People like Mahavira don't claim anything. The disciples of Gautam Buddha asked, "What is your position about knowing past, present and future?" And the humbleness of Gautam Buddha is so great, he said, "I am not omnipotent or omniscient or omnipresent. I have a clear vision, but compared to the vastness of existence it is a very small phenomenon.
"Yes, I can know about the past if I focus on the past; I can know about the future if I focus on the future; I can know about the present if I focus on the present. But focusing becomes impossible as you become enlightened, because focusing is another name for concentration. That is a quality of the mind, and enlightenment is the quality of no-mind." No-mind cannot focus. It cannot have any boundaries.
So there is a possibility that sometimes an enlightened man may commit subtle mistakes, but that does not go against his enlightenment. I wanted to make it clear to you because in today's sutras he is saying things which are right for a bodhisattva, because he does not know the way of the arhatas, but he is mistaken. He should have rather said, "I don't know the experiences of the arhatas because I am not an arhata." He is bragging about the MAHAYANA, the "Great Vehicle." And he is in some way condemning the HINAYANA, the "Small Vehicle" of the ARHATAS.
I will not agree with that because I am not a party to any group. It makes my work in one way simple, in one way very difficult -- simple because I can see from far away both sides of the coin, which people who are involved cannot see. But on the other hand, it makes my work more difficult because it starts taking a multidimensionality, and I have sometimes to speak against the people I have loved immensely.
But love is not a higher quality than truth.
When it comes to deciding between your love and your truth, truth has to be the decisive factor.
The sutras:
THE ESSENCE OF THE WAY IS DETACHMENT.
It is true. All of our miseries are nothing but attachment. Our whole ignorance and darkness is a strange combination of a thousand and one attachments. And we are attached to things which will be taken away by the time of death, or even perhaps before. You may be very much attached to money but you can go bankrupt tomorrow. You may be very much attached to your power and position, your presidency, your prime ministership, but they are like soap bubbles. Today they are here, tomorrow not even a trace will be left.
It happened before the Russian revolution, the prime minister of Russia was Kerensky. During the time of the chaos of revolution when the czar and his whole family were butchered -- nineteen persons in all -- the revolutionaries were so revengeful that they did not leave even a six-month-old baby. They did not want any trace of the family of the czars left in the world. But Kerensky escaped in time. He died in 1960, and for a half century nobody had any idea what had happened to Kerensky. He was a grocer, running a grocery store in New York, in disguise.
The Russian empire was one of the greatest empires that has ever existed, spreading from one continent to another continent. And the prime minister, who has had great power, one day becomes the owner of a grocery store in New York, and becomes so afraid that he changes his name, he changes his identity. Only when he died was it found in his papers and in his diaries that he was Kerensky, the missing prime minister of the czars.
All our positions, all our powers, our money, our prestige, respectability, they are all soap bubbles. And certainly, THE ESSENCE OF THE WAY IS DETACHMENT. Don't get attached to the soap bubbles; otherwise you will be continuously in misery and agony. Those soap bubbles don't care that you are attached to them; they go on bursting and disappearing into the air and leaving you behind with a wounded heart, with a failure, with a deep destruction of your ego. They make you sour, bitter, irritated, frustrated. They make your life a hell.
Just to understand that life is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of is the essence of the way. Detachment: live in the world but don't be of the world. Live in the world but don't let the world live within you. Remember that it is all a beautiful dream, because everything is changing and disappearing.
Don't cling to anything.
Clinging is the cause of our being unconscious.
If you start unclinging a tremendous release of energy will happen within you. And that energy that was involved in clinging to things will bring a new dawn to your being, a new light, a new understanding, a tremendous unburdening -- no possibility of any misery, agony, anguish.
On the contrary, when all these things disappear you find yourself serene, calm and quiet, in a subtle joyfulness. There is a laughter in your being. That's what Bodhidharma says, that a buddha laughs without laughing. Nobody has seen any statue of Buddha laughing -- there is no need for him to laugh; his whole being is feeling the laugh.
You have to understand the psychology of laughter. You laugh very easily, but your laughter has a different quality than the laughter of the buddha. You laugh because your life is so miserable that any moment, any incident which looks ridiculous helps you to forget your misery for a moment. All your tensions disappear and there is a laughter. Hence laughter is a great relaxing phenomenon. It is tremendously healthy. Within a second it takes you beyond all your tensions, but only for a moment ...and you are back again in your dark cave.
A buddha laughs without laughing because he has no tensions. He does not accumulate the energy in tensions that can explode in laughter. And he knows that life is ridiculous. Here people are doing things which are all laughable. Laughter becomes something ingrained in the very cells of his being; it does not come just to his lips. His clarity makes him see things which perhaps you go on missing seeing.
I have heard ...a woman suddenly said to the man who was in bed with her, "Get up, quick! I heard the noise of my husband's car, which is so rotten that you can hear it from half a mile away. He has just braked in the driveway. You just get up!"
The man got up and he said, "But where am I to go?"
She said, "Jump out of the window!" Fortunately it was not a sixty story building -- it was just the ground floor -- so he jumped out. But he was naked and it was raining. But fortunately a group of joggers was passing by so he joined them, finding no other way; otherwise, standing there naked, he would be caught.
He mixed with the two dozen joggers, and in the darkness of the early morning he managed well. Just one jogger by his side saw that this man looked naked. He could not resist his temptation. He asked, "Do you always jog naked?"
The man said, "Yes." Then as darkness was disappearing and a little light was coming up, the jogger recognized that the naked man was nobody else but the bishop. And in that small light he saw that he was not just naked, he was wearing a condom.
He said, "Father, do you always wear a condom when jogging?"
The bishop said, "No, not always; only when it is raining."
The more watchful you become, the more you will find life such a comedy. So much is happening all around -- so much stupidity, so much ridiculousness. But a buddha does not laugh because twenty-four hours a day, in his clarity and transparent vision, each cell of his being is laughing. There is no need to laugh loudly -- silently he is in laughter. That is laughing without laughter.
If you become detached you will be able to see how people are attached to trivia, and how much they are suffering. And you will laugh at yourself because you were also in the same boat before. Detachment is certainly the essence of the way ...AND THE GOAL OF THOSE WHO PRACTICE IS FREEDOM FROM APPEARANCES.
What you see in the world is not the reality, but only an appearance. Deep behind the appearance, the mask, is the reality. To know the reality you have to be free from appearances. And all your attachments prevent you; you become attached to the mask. We rarely grow and become mature. We just go on changing our toys. We remain children; we go on changing our teddy bears.
You must have seen in railway stations, in airports, small children dragging their teddy bears with them, ugly, dirty, but to them they are very essential. Without them they cannot sleep; the teddy bear is their companion. They will become older and they will drop the teddy bear but they will drop it only when they have found another teddy bear. It does not matter what the shape of the teddy bear is -- it can be money.
I used to know in my village ...and I have never forgotten that man and I don't think I will ever forget him. He was a goldsmith, but very rich, and he had a way of speaking which was very hilarious. He was continuously stuttering and he was attached to a strange idea and he used to brag about it: "Unless I have one hundred rupees in my pocket I don't urinate." He was famous all over the village. What a great idea -- one hundred rupees have to be in his pocket, then only can he urinate! He was showing his richness, but a strange way he found; I don't think anybody has ever had that idea, it was so original. But it was hilarious.
In those days there were no notes, so he was carrying one hundred rupees in gold coins -- such a weight in his pockets. And people used to ask him, "Where are you going? Have you counted your rupees? -- because if there are ninety nine and suddenly you feel like going to the urinal, you will be stuck. And he would immediately count his money and he would say, "There is no problem. One hundred rupees is a must. Without it I cannot do even such a small thing as pissing -- what to say about great things?" That was his teddy bear. He used to sleep with those one hundred rupees.
You may not be aware -- because you are not aware -- but if you look a little bit, you can find what your teddy bear is.
All appearances in the world are preventing you from knowing the reality of the world and of your own being. What appears is not the reality. Reality is hidden behind appearances, and unless you become attuned with reality, those appearances which are just dream stuff are going to torture you continuously. And everybody is feeling the agony, the misery, but goes on living it because there seems to be no way to drop it.
Bodhidharma is telling you the way, and it is the essential way of all the religions: detachment, freedom from appearances.
THE SUTRAS SAY, "DETACHMENT IS ENLIGHTENMENT BECAUSE IT NEGATES APPEARANCES." ...THE THREE REALMS ARE GREED, ANGER AND DELUSION.
You have to watch these three realms because these are the barriers, the three barriers to your enlightenment.
Bodhidharma is very short, condensed; he does not go in for philosophical discussions, he simply states the fact. And that's his beauty. He has reduced the whole religion and the way out of it into very few words.
Greed is your aggression.
It is the desire always for more.
It never stops; it goes on asking for more. And because it goes on asking for more, you are always miserable. Whatever you may have, you cannot enjoy it because you don't have more. By the time you have more, your greed has gone ahead of you. It is always ahead of you asking for more.
I used to stay in Calcutta in a very rich family and the husband and wife used to come to pick me up from the airport. The husband was always a very cheerful person, but one time I found he was very sad -- driving the car, but very sad.
I asked his wife, "What is the matter?" -- because he had always been chitchatting and was always cheerful. The wife laughed and the husband looked at her very seriously, very angrily.
The wife said, "You are asking, so I am saying the whole responsibility is yours. I am not to be looked at as if I am committing a sin." And laughingly she said to me,"He is sad because he has lost five lakh rupees."
I said, "But you are laughing and your husband has lost five lakh rupees?"
She said, "I am laughing because in fact he has gained five lakh rupees -- but he was expecting ten lakhs, and the trouble is, he cannot understand that he has earned five lakhs out of a business. He's sad because he was counting on ten lakhs. What about the remaining five lakhs? So although he has profited enough, he is not happy."
His misery is that he has lost five lakhs -- and he has not lost a single paisa. I asked the man, "What is the matter?"
He said, "In a way she is right, but I am really feeling sad. Ten lakhs were absolutely certain in the business. Even more was possible but only five lakhs turned up, and I cannot forget the five lakhs that I have missed."
Now can you think that a man who is thinking in terms of expectations can be happy, joyous? Your expectations are always more than the reality allows. Hence, there is always a feeling of failure. There is always a sadness lurking somewhere in your being.
Greed is an aggressive attitude towards existence: grab as much as you can and go on grabbing more and more and more. Waste your whole life and your whole intelligence in grabbing more and more and what is the point? Death will not be late, not even for a single minute. It always comes at the right time, and all that you have grabbed and wasted your life for, you will have to leave here.
Bodhidharma has said: One man was so greedy that when his wife was almost dying, his friends told him, "It is time ...you should call a physician."
But he said, "It costs too much."
They said, "It is going to be really ugly, inhuman. Your wife is dying and you are thinking about paying some fee to the physician!"
He said, "Wives don't count much. If she dies I can get married again. And death and life are not in the hands of man, they are decided by fate. If she's going to die, she will die whether I call the physician or not. Why waste money? If she is going to live, she will live. Either way, a physician is absolutely unnecessary."
The friends said, "We have never thought that you are so greedy. We have always heard that you are greedy -- but so much! Do you think you are going to take all your money with you when you die?"
He said, "Of course. I have a plan." They could not believe him.
They said, "What plan?"
He said, "Before I die I will take all the money in a boat, go deep into the ocean and jump with all my money, into the ocean."
The friends could not believe their ears. They said, "Are you mad or something? Still your money will be left in the ocean and you will have to go alone." At least there would be a satisfaction that nobody else was enjoying his money.
You will find all kinds of greedy people and you will find all sorts of greed within yourself. And when greed is not fulfilled, anger arises, frustration arises. You become angry with the world, you become angry with yourself, you become angry with everybody.
You can see it in all old people. Why are they so irritated? Why is it so difficult to stand them? They are frustrated people; they have wasted their life in grabbing more and more. But the more is never satisfied. Now they are feeling angry at life, so any excuse is enough and they will become angry. Greed is the root cause and when it is not fulfilled, it leaves you with great anger, frustration, irritation, failure.
And in your anger and frustration and failure a third thing arises: delusion. Delusion is a consolation. Delusion is a way somehow to keep yourself together.
When Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the prime minister of India, there were at least ten persons who believed that they were Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. At least one I knew personally because he lived in the nearby district, and I used to go to that city to lecture in their colleges. I loved that man because he used exactly the same clothes as Jawaharlal Nehru -- with the Gandhi cap, with the handwoven khadi, with a Jawahar jacket. And he talked like Jawaharlal.
He was a laughingstock but he never cared. He said to me, "These people are idiots." And he used to send telegrams if he was going to visit a beautiful place which was nearby, Kanhakisli, a beautiful forest with thousands of deer. He would just send a telegram -- "Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is arriving" -- to the collector of that district, signed by the secretary of Jawaharlal.
And he deceived people many times. Circuit houses were emptied, cleaned -- Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is coming! And later on they would find that this man is bogus. Finally he was put in a madhouse.
It was not a new phenomenon. In England, when Winston Churchill was alive, there were at least three more Winston Churchills in England, believing absolutely that they were Winston Churchill.
There is on record a case in the life of Kalif Omar. A man was brought to him who was declaring that he had come from God with a new message: "Now the message Mohammed brought is out-of-date. It is time, because almost one thousand years have passed. Everything has changed and God has sent me as his prophet with a new message."
Mohammedans are very fanatic. Omar ordered that this man be tortured for seven days. "Tie him to a pillar, naked, and beat him and don't give him anything to eat. And after seven days I will come and see."
So after seven days he went there. The man was almost dying; so much blood had flowed, because they were beating him continuously, and without giving him food. Omar said, "What do you think now? Have you changed your mind or not?"
The man laughed and said, "Changed my mind? When I was leaving God, he said to me, `Remember, my prophets are always tortured.' Your torture has proved perfectly that I am the prophet."
At that very point another man, who had been tied to another pillar for almost one month because he was declaring that he himself was God, shouted to Omar, "Don't listen to that idiot. I have never sent any prophet after Mohammed. Mohammed is my only prophet and this man is a cheat!"
Now what to say about these people? And they are not exceptions. Everybody has some kind of delusion. Everybody is thinking things which he is not. But these delusions are helpful as a lubricating system. It helps your life somehow to move on.
Great consolations -- if you cannot become the prime minister, at least you can create a delusion that you are. If you cannot BECOME the richest man you can still believe that you ARE. You can make your delusions so solid that nobody can change them.
A madman was brought to a psychiatrist. His madness was very special; his madness was that he had been thinking that he had died. So when his family would tell him to go to the shop, tend the shop, he would say, "You don't understand. Dead people don't go to the shop. They don't tend shops."
They tried hard in every way to persuade him that he was perfectly alive, and he would say, "How can I believe you when I know that I'm dead?"
Finally they brought him to the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist said, "Don't be worried. I will put him right." And he asked the madman, "Do you think dead people bleed?"
The madman said, "No, dead people never bleed."
So the psychiatrist said, "There is a simple experiment to be done." And he took his knife and cut the dead man's finger just a little bit, and blood came running out. The family was very happy that this man, within a minute, had changed the whole situation. But they never knew that delusions are not so easily dispelled.
The madman laughed. The psychiatrist said, "That blood shows that you are not dead."
He said, "No, that blood shows that the proverb that `dead men don't bleed' is wrong; they do bleed. I am the proof. Now what can you do? The proverb is wrong and I am the proof of its being wrong. Dead men do bleed!"
Delusions settle so deeply in you, and the reason for those delusions is that to live continuously in frustration is a difficult task. You start believing in things which you have not got. You should look into your own mind to see how many things are only delusions.
Bodhidharma says these THREE REALMS ARE GREED, ANGER AND DELUSION. TO LEAVE THE THREE REALMS MEANS TO GO FROM GREED, ANGER AND DELUSION BACK TO MORALITY, MEDITATION AND WISDOM. Morality, meditation and wisdom are in fact not three things but only three names.
The exact thing is meditation. On one side it brings morality in your life; on another side it brings wisdom in your life. But you cannot do anything to attain wisdom directly; neither can you do anything to be moral directly. But you can do something for meditation; you can meditate directly, and morality and wisdom both are by-products. Morality will be in your actions and wisdom will be your intelligence, your awareness, your final enlightenment.
THE SUTRAS SAY, "BUDDHAS HAVE ONLY BECOME BUDDHAS WHILE LIVING WITH THE THREE POISONS AND NOURISHING THEMSELVES ON THE PURE DHARMA."
Bodhidharma is saying not to be worried about the three poisons of greed, anger and delusion. Even buddhas have lived through the same experience as you all are passing through; but because they started nourishing themselves through meditation and started becoming aware of their self-nature, all these poisons disappeared. They have found the antidote.
Meditation is the antidote to all the poisons of your life.
It is the nourishment of your authentic nature.
THE THREE POISONS ARE GREED, ANGER AND DELUSION. THE GREAT VEHICLE IS THE GREATEST OF ALL VEHICLES.
This I call a prejudice. He is continuously insisting and emphasizing that Mahayana, THE GREAT VEHICLE IS THE GREATEST OF ALL VEHICLES. IT IS THE CONVEYANCE OF BODHISATTVAS, WHO USE EVERYTHING WITHOUT USING ANYTHING. AND WHO TRAVEL ALL DAY WITHOUT TRAVELLING. SUCH IS THE VEHICLE OF BUDDHAS. THE SUTRAS SAY, "NO VEHICLE IS THE VEHICLE OF BUDDHAS."
To an ordinary, logical mind, to anybody who is looking at life with rationality, this will look a very absurd statement. First he says, THE GREAT VEHICLE IS THE GREATEST OF ALL VEHICLES. IT IS THE CONVEYANCE OF BODHISATTVAS, WHO USE EVERYTHING WITHOUT USING ANYTHING, AND WHO TRAVEL ALL DAY WITHOUT TRAVELLING. SUCH IS THE VEHICLE OF BUDDHAS.
And then, THE SUTRAS SAY, "NO VEHICLE IS THE VEHICLE OF BUDDHAS." It is the same as his other statement. Walking without walking, acting without acting, speaking without speaking ...so there is no contradiction. He is using the same expression for "vehicle" -- the greatest vehicle is a "no-vehicle."
THE SUTRAS SAY, "THE CAVE OF FIVE AGGREGATES IS THE HALL OF ZEN."
The five aggregates are the five elements the body is made of: earth, air, fire, water, and the sky. These five are the aggregates -- SKANDHAS -- elements of which your body is made. Just behind these five elements is hidden your treasure, THE HALL OF ZEN. Just inside the temple made by these five elements, is the fire of your awareness.
This body is a temple, and your consciousness is the god of the temple.
"THE OPENING OF THE INNER EYE IS THE DOOR OF THE GREAT VEHICLE." WHAT COULD BE CLEARER?
As you become more and more aware, you start having a third eye. These two eyes look outwards; that third eye looks inwards.
And to see yourself is the greatest experience, because once you have seen your beauty, then all beauties of the outside world fade away.
Once you have seen your purity, then everything outside becomes polluted. Once you have seen your inner splendor, then even a beautiful sunrise, or a grand sunset, or a night sky full of stars, are nothing compared to the splendor of your being. You are the highest peak of evolution, of light, of consciousness.
NOT THINKING ABOUT ANYTHING IS ZEN.
Just being silent without any thought is what is meant by meditation.
ONCE YOU KNOW THIS, WALKING, STANDING, SITTING, OR LYING DOWN, EVERYTHING YOU DO IS ZEN.
This is a significant statement. Perhaps there is no other religion that has made your whole life, twenty-four hours a day, a meditative experience. Zen does not believe in meditating one hour in the morning, or one hour in the night. It does not make meditation a separate, particular act. It wants meditation to become a quality of your being.
So whatever you are doing -- walking, sitting, standing, lying down, chopping wood, carrying water from the well, it does not matter. Whatever you are doing, you are doing it so silently, so peacefully, without any stirring of thoughts in your mind.
Then your whole life has become meditation. You go to bed silently, you wake up silently, and one day you will realize that you also sleep silently -- as thoughts disappear, dreams also disappear. Then the circle is complete.
For Zen, meditation has to be a twenty-four-hour affair. It is not some extra act that you have to do. It is not a Sunday religion -- for six days do everything you want to do, but at least on the seventh day, on Sunday, go to the church for one hour and you are a great Christian. It is absolutely illogical, and absurd. Just going to the church for one hour, and then living your mundane life with greed, with anger, with delusion, is not going to transform you. And no Jesus can save you.
My people in the commune made a small placard for cars. It said, "Jesus saves, Moses invests, Osho spends." I like that. What is the point of saving? Jesus seems to be like a banker. And of course, Moses invests. For Moses, everything is business. And for me, certainly, everything is going to be taken away. Before it is taken away, use it, spend it, enjoy it. Why wait for death to snatch it away? Certainly it is absolutely right. A one-hour religion, or even a Mohammedan who prays five times a day, is not going to help.
Religion has to become something like your heartbeat.
Meditation has to become something like your breathing. Whatever you are doing, you are breathing; it is not a separate action. And only then are you saturated, in every fiber of your being, with meditativeness.
TO KNOW THAT THE MIND IS EMPTY IS TO SEE THE BUDDHA. THE BUDDHAS OF THE TEN DIRECTIONS HAVE NO MIND. TO SEE NO MIND IS TO SEE THE BUDDHA.
Now you can see why I have been insisting that the disciple was taking wrong notes. This is the right statement, by Bodhidharma. The buddhas have no-mind. TO SEE NO MIND IS TO SEE THE BUDDHA.
But it is very strange that these sutras have existed for one thousand years, and nobody has seen the contradiction. Perhaps religious people are so blind, such believers, that they will not see any contradiction, even if it is there -- so apparent.
TO GIVE UP YOURSELF WITHOUT REGRET IS THE GREATEST CHARITY.
But the Indian constitution will not believe in it. The Indian constitution believes in charity according to the Christian idea. It is a very strange constitution. It is a hodgepodge.
In Hindi we call it KHICHRI, humbug. What the people who made the constitution have done ...they have collected all the constitutions of the world, and taken beautiful passages from every constitution, without knowing that those beautiful passages were alive in a certain context, in THEIR constitution. When you take them out, they become dead.
The Indian constitution is the most dead constitution in the world, because everything has been taken and borrowed from others. It is not a growth, it is simply a combination. Take everything good ...somebody's eyes are good, take them out; somebody's ears are really beautiful, take them out; somebody's mustache -- pull it out.
You can make a man just by taking beautiful things from everywhere -- the eyes of Cleopatra, and the nose of Amrapali, the body of Alexander the Great and the mind of Albert Einstein. But remember, although you have taken all the best parts from the best people, you have collected only a corpse -- it won't have any life.
What Bodhidharma is saying about charity .... We have been fighting with the Indian government and the Indian courts for almost ten years, that their conception of charity is very poor, their conception is very limited. Give to the poor, make hospitals, make schools ...this is charity. There is nothing sublime in their idea of charity. Bodhidharma's single statement is far more significant. He says: TO GIVE UP YOURSELF WITHOUT REGRET IS THE GREATEST CHARITY. To give up yourself to whom? To the universe.
Don't be a separate entity. Just drop into the ocean of existence and become one with it. This is the greatest charity. What else can you give? You came empty-handed into the world, and you will go empty-handed out of the world.
Everything that you have is not yours. Your house is nothing but a caravanserai. Your money is not your money; you have exploited for it. Your land is not your land; it was always there before you came and it will remain there after you are gone.
What is yours? You can only give that which is yours, you cannot give that which is not yours. You cannot contribute all the stars to the poor; you cannot contribute the sun to the poor; you cannot contribute the moon to the poor. It does not belong to you in the first place.
All that you can contribute is your own being. Hence, Bodhidharma is absolutely right that there is only one charity and that is to give yourself without regret, in fact with great joy and rejoicing, to existence. Become part of the whole.
TO TRANSCEND MOTION AND STILLNESS IS THE HIGHEST MEDITATION.
Whether you are sitting silently, or you are walking silently, you have to transcend all form, motion and stillness, action and inaction, day and night, life and death. Transcend all, and you will have the highest fragrance of meditation in you.
MORTALS KEEP MOVING -- and again he comes to his prejudice -- WHILE ARHATS STAY STILL. BUT THE HIGHEST MEDITATION SURPASSES THAT OF BOTH MORTALS AND ARHATS.
He does not know anything about arhatas. Arhatas don't say anything, but they have also transcended motion and stillness. Just because they don't say anything does not mean that they have not transcended. In fact, their transcendence is so great that it cannot be said or conveyed in words. So I will not agree with Bodhidharma. He has to forgive me. With every apology, I want to say to him that his understanding about arhatas is absolutely zero. Instead of arhatas, he should have used the word "ascetics."
Mortals and ascetics don't know this transcending.
PEOPLE WHO REACH SUCH UNDERSTANDING FREE THEMSELVES FROM ALL APPEARANCES WITHOUT EFFORT AND CURE ALL ILLNESSES WITHOUT TREATMENT. SUCH IS THE POWER OF GREAT ZEN.
Such is the power of great meditation. Such is the power of knowing yourself. All illnesses disappear; illnesses of the spirit, all wounds are suddenly cured -- wounds of the spirit. And all appearances, delusions, greed and anger are found no more, not even their footprints. Such is the power of knowing oneself in deep meditation.
He is perfectly right about everything, except what he says about arhatas. That has to be changed. In fact I am not against Bodhidharma, I am doing him a great favor. I am taking out his mistakes; I am making him almost infallible. His prejudice against arhatas drags him down from the great sunlit peak which is his home.
If you meet Bodhidharma somewhere, in some life, just remind him that a few corrections are needed. And certainly he cannot make me afraid by his big eyes. I can also make him afraid with my big eyes.
Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.
Next: Chapter 10: Not to be in the mind is everything
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