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ZEN: THE PATH OF PARADOX
VOL. 2
Chapter 10: The Bridge but not the Water Flows
Question 2
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Paradox, Vol. 2
Question 2
WHY DO YOU INSIST SO MUCH ON THE IRRATIONAL? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE RATIONAL?
The rational is not rational enough. That is what is wrong with it. If you are a REALLY rational person you will see that many things are irrational in life. A rational person, how can he avoid seeing that there are many irrational things in life? A rational person is bound to stumble upon many irrational facts.
Your love is irrational. You fall in love with a woman; you cannot produce any reason for it. You simply shrug your shoulders, you say, 'It happened.' You may find some ways -- you will say that she looks beautiful, this and that. But she does not look beautiful to anybody else; nobody else has fallen in love with her. So it cannot be a simple case -- because she is beautiful, that's why you have fallen in love. In fact the truth is just the other way round -- you have fallen in love, that's why she looks beautiful. And one day get married to her, and one day suddenly she will no more be beautiful. And you will start thinking, 'Was I mad? Why have I fallen with this woman?' And you will start thinking she is the ugliest woman in the world.
Wives and husbands never look beautiful to each other -- because that love, that so-called love, that illusion, wears fast. If you never get your woman you may love her for your whole life -- that's possible. That's why Majanu goes on loving, and crying, 'Laila, Laila, Laila!' -- because he couldn't get her. He was a fortunate man. Those who get their Lailas, they know that once you get, then you start praying to God, 'How to get rid of?'
What happens? It is not beauty -- something irrational in you, something from your unconscious that you are not aware of, possesses you.
Now the psychology of the unconscious has looked into the matter more deeply. The child, each child, boy or girl, carries two personalities within himself or herself -- the personality of the mother and the father, because a child is made from two biologies, two psychologies. A child is a combination of two persons, two personalities -- something is contributed by the father and something is contributed by the mother. If the child is a male child the mother-part inside him will go on looking for some woman who is almost similar.
Your woman inside is nothing but your mother part inside you. And when some woman fits with your inner woman, you fall in love -- but this is absolutely irrational. And exactly that happens when you fall in love with a man. You carry your father inside you -- when some man fits the image.... Nobody can fit the image totally, that's the trouble. You are not going to get your father as your husband ever; your father cannot become your husband, your mother cannot become your wife.
And no two individuals are alike -- this is the problem. And you are searching for your mother unconsciously. When you suddenly see a woman as beautiful, that is your mother -- in some way she resembles your mother. But in some way only. Maybe her voice is like your mother, maybe her eyes have the same colour, maybe her hair is the same colour. Or maybe the way she walks is exactly the way of your mother. And you don't know it; you don't know it consciously. It is in your unconscious -- it is hidden deep there in the darkness. And you fall in love. But no woman can be exactly like your mother, so sooner or later things start coming up which are not like your mother. Then disturbance starts -- the honeymoon is complete.
These are irrational facts. Man, if really rational, is bound to stumble upon many many facts which are irrational. Even your greatest mathematician and logician falls in love with a woman. Irrational, utterly irrational.
Why do I insist for the irrational? Because, to me, reason is just in the middle. Below reason there is the irrational -- the irrational of the unconscious. And above reason is again the irrational -- the irrational of the superconscious. And the conscious mind is a very small mind, very tiny mind. Below is an ocean: sexuality, anger, greed, possessiveness, jealousy, violence -- the whole animal past is there. A whole animal past exists there in your unconscious that is absolutely irrational.
Have you not observed sometimes? -- when a man is really angry he looks more like an animal than like a human being. When a man is really mad he barks like a dog or roars like a lion or jumps like a tiger or behaves like a monkey. That's why, once you are out of the anger, you start feeling embarrassed and you say, 'Sorry.' And you say, 'In spite of me... how it happened I don't know.' It came from below; it came from the basement of your being. You were not aware of it; it took possession of you.
Below your reason there is a vast continent of irrationality. The animals exist there, the vegetables exist there, rocks exist there -- the whole past. That is the real meaning of the theory that you have been incarnated in many ways. There have been eighty-four thousand YONIS -- YOU have lived eighty-four thousand lives on different planes. Some day you were like a rock -- something of it is still carried in your unconscious. Some day you were a plant; something of it is still carried; the flower and the thorn, both. Some day you were like a dog and some day you were a tiger and some day you were a fox. And all that is carried -- piled upon each other, they are there. Whenever you lose your rational, the irrational comes up and takes possession of you.
Above it, again there is the superconscious. That too is irrational. There God is hidden. Below is the animal, above is God. If you fall below humanity you become animal, if you go above humanity you become divine. People are afraid of the irrational because they know only one kind of irrational -- that which is below. And all great religions teach the irrational which is above. You have to go higher than yourself. You have to drop your logic.
When you meditate, again that happens. When you are angry then too it happens, then too you are below reason. When you are meditating you are above reason -- but you go beyond reason in both the ways. When a man is mad he is below reason. And when a man becomes a saint he is above reason. That's why saints and madmen look a little alike -- something similar. One thing at least: they both are not in their rational minds. Below reason is a vast continent of irreason. And above reason is the whole sky of divinity, the infinite sky of divinity.
And Zen particularly is irrational. You cannot figure it out with your reason.
I was reading a book of Aldous Huxley. He talks about a Chinese Zen master: 'The Chinese Zen master was giving a tea-party one freezing night. Kaizenji said to his disciples, "There is a certain thing. It is as black as lacquer. It supports heaven and earth. It always appears in activity, but no one can grasp it in activity. My disciples, how can you grasp it?"
'He was indicating the nature of TATHATA' -- suchness -- or Tao, or DHAMMA. He was indicating the nature of existence itself. He was saying: 'There is a certain thing...' CERTAIN, he says, because there is no way to specify it; you cannot pin-point it, it is so big. 'It is as black as lacquer' -- as black as a dark night. You can be lost in it. It is not like light, it is more like darkness. Why? Because in the light, distinctions are clear: you know that this is a tree and this is a pillar, and this is a man and this is a woman -- you know separation, distinction.
In light, multiplicity arises. In darkness, the one. If suddenly it gets dark, then where is the pillar and where is the tree, and where is the man and where is the woman? All disappear into oneness. So that TATHATA -- that suchness, Tao, DHAMMA, truth, or God.... Any name will do -- all are alike, all mean the same, all are just metaphors.
"'It supports heaven and earth. It always appears in activity, but no one can grasp it in activity. My disciples, how can you grasp it?" He was indicating the nature of TATHATA, metaphorically of course...'
And this was no ordinary question; Zen masters ask questions in particular situations. Now it was clear. The night is freezing, the tea is ready, the samovar is humming, the fragrance of the tea is in the tea-room, the master is sitting with his disciples, and suddenly he asked this. Out of the blue. Now, this is no time to talk great philosophy; the night is freezing and they would like to have hot tea. And the tea is ready, and now it is a dangerous question, because if it is not answered rightly -- that is the practice of Zen masters -- he will tell the disciples to go home. The tea-party, which has not even started, will be finished. They are not going to get the tea.
'The disciples of Kaizenji did not know how to reply.' Not that they cannot create philosophy, not that they cannot spin words -- they can. But a Zen master is not asking for words, he is asking for INSIGHT. Unless you have experienced it, you cannot say anything -- and whatsoever you say will be meaningless. Reason can propose many things, but those will not be accepted. The thing has to come from existential experience.
'Then finally one of them, Tai Shuso by name, tried: "You fail to grasp it because you try to grasp it in motion. " He was indicating that when he meditated in silence, TATHATA appeared within himself.'
He is saying that if you are silent, unmoving, if there is no movement of the mind inside -- all has stopped, the mind has halted, there is no activity, there is just WU-WEI, inactivity, passivity -- then it appears. That Tao, that existence, that God, suddenly fills you, overflows from you. You cannot grasp it while the mind is moving, is in action; you cannot grasp it. But when the mind is not moving, it comes on its own accord. You cannot grasp it if you try to grasp it, because to grasp means activity. But it comes when you are not even trying to grasp it; when you are just a receptacle, a womb, then it comes. It comes in a state of feminine inactivity, receptivity. He has answered very rationally. But...
'Kaizenji dismissed the tea-party before it had really begun. He was displeased with the answer.'
It is a rational answer, it appeals -- you will also think what he is saying is right. But it is half. Unless that tathata can be caught in activity too, it will not be the whole, it will not be the total. If you cannot find God in the marketplace too, and you can find it only in the Himalayas, then that God will be only half God. And a half God is a dead God. You cannot divide God; you cannot say when you are sitting in a Himalayan cave it is there. It arises -- you need not grasp it, it grabs you, rather.
This is what many people have done. They say, 'Escape, renounce. Here there is no God: go to the Himalayas.' That silence is of the Himalayas -- it has nothing to do with God. It is the silence of the cave. Come back, after thirty years sitting in a cave, to M.G. Road in Poona -- and finished is all your silence, and all your attainments are gone.
That's why renunciates become afraid of the world -- they don't come there, they cling to their cave. This is escapism. And this is not God, that you can find only in the caves. God is everywhere. Only God is: he has to be everywhere. Even in the marketplace he is as throbbing-alive as in the Himalayas. In the Himalayas he is silent, in the marketplace he is noisy -- but he is everywhere. When you are sitting unmoving he is unmoving, and when you are running he is running -- but he is there.
So the answer is rational, but not whole; reason cannot answer for the whole. Reason divides, reason analyzes, reason dissects -- it has dissected even God. God cannot be dissected. Even while you are ignorant, God is in you. He is your ignorance -- who else can be? And when you know, he is your knowing. God is your ignorance and God is your enlightenment. That's what Buddha means when he says: The world is nirvana. It is one; these are two aspects of the same thing. Don't divide -- you divide, and you miss.
The master dismissed the party. Aldous Huxley comments on this. He thinks -- he is a great philosopher in his own right -- he thinks if he had been there in the party, he would have suggested a better answer. What is his answer? He says, 'My own guess is that the tea-party might have been prolonged, at least for a few minutes, if Tai Shuso had answered in some such way as this: "If I cannot grasp TATHATA in activity, then obviously I must cease to be 'I', so that TATHATA may be able to grasp this ex-me and make it one with itself, not merely in the immobility and silence of meditation -- as happens to ARHATS -- but also in activity -- as happens to BODHISATTVAS, for whom SANSARA and NIRVANA are identical."'
Now this is getting even worse. And it is good that Aldous Huxley was not there, otherwise he would have been beaten! The master has simply dismissed the party. That is great respect towards the disciple who has answered -- simply dismissing it. Zen masters keep their staff by their side, and on and off they hit. Sometimes for no reason, no visible reason, they hit. But one thing is always there: if they see that you are bringing in your head too much, they hit your head. They say, 'Slip out of it.' They are saying go deeper than the head or higher than the head; don't cling to the head.
This is too heady an answer. A guess won't do, Aldous Huxley. He says, 'This is my guess.' A guess won't do! -- only experience. Nobody can guess; nobody can suppose that 'This answer might have helped.' No, guesswork is guesswork -- it is rational. It is of the head, of the mind. Aldous Huxley would have gotten really beaten -- this much philosophy would not be tolerated by a Zen master.
That's why I insist so much for the irrational height. You have to go above your heads. Always try one small experiment: standing before the mirror, just think you have no head. Every day -- just for twenty minutes, thirty minutes, forty minutes -- stand before the mirror and just look at the head and say, 'I don't have any head.' Within two or three months, one day suddenly you will see the head has disappeared: you are standing there without a head. Then you will know what the answer can be -- not before it; you cannot guess. I know the answer but I will not say. Because it cannot be said.
The master was not asking for an articulate answer; the disciples had to DO something. They have to ACT immediately in some way; they have to SHOW it. Some disciple has to show it -- immediately, then and there, in his act, in his being -- that it is there. And you cannot deceive a master -- if it is not there, it is not there. If it is there, he will immediately feel it is there.
It happens -- a disciple comes to a master, the master has given him a koan. A koan is a special method to drive you crazy. It is a riddle which has no answer -- the answer is not possible, the answer exists not. The disciple knows it, the master knows it, that there is no answer. And the disciple has to try to find the answer -- for months together, sometimes years together. Unless you find the answer, the master will not give you further instructions. The koan has to be solved. And the disciple knows that this is absurd -- but it has to be solved. And deep down he knows, he has heard, he has read, that there is no answer. But the master says, 'Go on, find it.'
So when you try to find an answer for something for which no answer exists, by and by you start getting berserk, crazy. You try and try, and it goes on slipping and slipping and slipping. In Japan, it is called 'Zen-madness'. In Japan, even doctors know it -- because sometimes it happens to the disciple, and his family may take him to the doctor. Because he goes berserk -- he starts shouting, doing things, screaming, shaking, quaking, trembling, for no reason. Or starts laughing or crying for no reason, or starts dancing. Sometimes the family will take the person to the doctor. But in Japan they know.
And that has to be known all over the world. In fact, every medical college should teach the doctors a special course -- that there are people who are not really insane: don't treat them, otherwise you will disturb them for their whole life. Your medicines, your electric shocks, your tranquilizers, your injections, are dangerous if the person is suffering from Zen-madness. Then you will destroy all his growth possibilities. In Japan they won't treat the person. The moment they feel that this is a Zen disease, the first thing they do is inquire: 'Is the man in any way connected with any Zen master or Zen monastery? If he is connected, then take him to the master, take him to the monastery. Don't bring him to the medical practitioner.'
A koan creates an artificial neurosis. We are carrying much neurosis within. It is repressed -- we are sitting on top of it, it is like a volcano. That Zen koan, that impossible riddle, goes on goading, goading -- and one day suddenly that volcano erupts, explodes. Then you are no more in control; you go beyond control. You cannot manage yourself; all your reason is gone in fragments. It has been an explosion, and you are thrown away completely. You are no more the same as you were before; something new has happened.
This Zen-madness is the ANSWER. The master will say, 'Good. So it has happened. Now wait, now just be patient.' For three weeks, four weeks, six weeks at the most, the person has simply to wait. Nothing to do, he eats, sleeps, takes his bath, as he feels. He is left alone in the monastery in a small cottage, far away. Nobody goes to talk to him, nobody is allowed to advise him. He simply relaxes there, takes a sunbath, lies on the grass, rolls on the grass. Left alone, whatsoever he feels like doing he does. When he wants to dance he dances, when he wants to shout he shouts.
Only one thing is taken care of -- that he should not do any violence to himself. And ordinarily, people never do. Very rarely, somebody can go too far -- out of a hundred, only one percent of cases. That care has to be taken -- the master and other disciples go on watching from far away. No violence should be done to himself or to somebody else, that's all.
Within three weeks, six weeks, everything cools down. And the man comes with a new face -- with his original face. Fresh like dewdrops in the morning. His eyes are innocent. He has passed through madness, he has gone beyond madness; he has entered the superconscious. Before you enter the superconscious you will have to pass through a kind of crisis. This crisis is created by the koan.
This crisis, I am creating it here with many methods. People who come from the outside, just to watch, cannot understand it. It is a Zen crisis. When people go berserk, they think this is driving people mad -- 'What kind of religion is this?' They don't know. Religion basically drives you mad so that you can go beyond madness. Once you have passed that barrier you will never be mad; once you have passed that barrier you are a totally different kind of man. A new man is born. A great grace descends, and joy and peace and equilibrium.
It is almost like making love -- a millionfold. When you make love, what happens? Sexuality and spirituality are very alike. Sexuality is very small, atomic -- and spirituality is vast like the whole sky. The difference is of quantity, but ultimately quantitative difference leads to qualitative difference too.
Millionfold, great, is the orgasm of spirituality -- but it is an orgasm. It is exactly like sexual orgasm. When you are making love, what happens? First, tension starts mounting. More tension, more tension, tension starts mounting, you start feeling crazy. A moment comes when you feel that if orgasm is not going to happen you will go mad: the energy has to explode. And then the energy explodes -- from a certain peak the energy explodes.
When the energy explodes there is great joy. Because in that explosion the ego disappears for a moment. You are no more. God is. You are no more, TATHATA is -- only pure existence. Neither the woman is nor the man is; both have disappeared into orgasm. Both are pulsating into a different wavelength.
But that is there only for a single moment -- one moment, two moments, three moments -- that joy. And then what happens? After the joy has settled, you cool down. Great peace arises, great silence. You fall asleep in a beautiful slumber. This is a very tiny experience, very very tiny, just like a straw. And spirituality is a jungle. The whole jungle. But you can understand from it -- this is your experience, and this experience can become a metaphor.
In spirituality the same happens on a very great expansion. On a cosmic scale it happens. In meditation, in koan, in mantra, in chanting, in prayer, you go on creating a tension, a tension, a tension -- and tension mounts and mounts and takes months, years, sometimes the whole life. And the mounting goes on and on and on, and the tension becomes so much one day that there is no possibility to bear it any more. Then it explodes.
And that explosion is of great joy, ecstasy. One dances, one laughs. And then the joy subsides into deep silence; one becomes cool, tranquil. One has arrived.
But just as sexual orgasm is irrational, so is spiritual orgasm. All orgasmic experiences are irrational. That's why I insist for the irrational.
Next: Chapter 10: The Bridge but not the Water Flows, Question 3
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Paradox, Vol. 2
| ENERGY
|
GAIN ENERGY APPRENTICE
LEVEL1
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THE KARMA CLEARING
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