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WALKING IN ZEN, SITTING IN ZEN
Chapter 4: A Question Of Being
Question 1
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen
The first question
Question 1
OSHO, THE VISION "NEITHER THIS NOR THAT" FEELS SO NEGATIVE. HOW CAN I BE ACCEPTING OR EVEN CREATIVE WITH THIS? I FEEL TOTALLY CONFUSED.
Prem Helmut,
MIND LIVES IN THE DUALITY of the positive and the negative. It lives like a pendulum, moving from yes to no, from no to yes. It cannot live in the absolute yes, it cannot live in the absolute no. Absolute yes means now there is no possibility for the pendulum to move anywhere. Absolute no also means the same: no space for the mind to play games. Anything absolute is a death for the mind.
There are two possibilities of killing the mind, of transcending the mind: either absolute yes or absolute no. The Upanishads have used the first possibility, absolute yes, and Buddha has used the second possibility, absolute no. But look deeply and you will find they are not different, they are bridged by the same phenomenon - absoluteness. Anything absolute becomes the grave of the mind; it needs duality to exist.
That's why you are so afraid of the absolute negative, because in the absolute you start disappearing. You are your mind. Of course, there is something more in you than your mind, but you are not aware of it. And as you start disappearing, fear arises, confusion arises; one is scared, one wants to cling to whatsoever is available to cling to.
It is because of this miracle of the absolute that God has been synonymous with the absolute. God means the absolute. Either say absolute yes and your mind disappears, or say absolute no and your mind disappears.
Why has Buddha chosen to say absolute no, why not absolute yes? For a certain reason: with the absolute yes there is one danger. The danger is that you may not understand the absoluteness of the yes; you may still go on thinking that it is your old positivity. With the absolute no that danger is not possible. With the absolute no, death seems so clear that you cannot miss it - hence the confusion.
This confusion is good. Don't try to escape from it, go deeper into it. Soon it will become a chaos - not just confusion but chaos. When all that you have known about yourself is shattered, when all that you have believed in has evaporated, when all that you were identified with has slipped out of your hands - the very earth beneath you is no longer available, you are falling and falling into a bottomless abyss - that is chaos. And only out of chaos are stars born. Out of chaos is creativity.
You ask: How can I be accepting or even creative with this?
There is no question of accepting because every acceptance means that deep down there is rejection. Otherwise, why the question of acceptance? Why in the first place do you think of accepting? You must be rejecting somewhere.
I don't accept life because I don't reject it in the first place. It is simply there, neither rejected nor accepted. It is so. Buddha calls it tathata, suchness.
A man came to Buddha and asked, "What should we do with death? Should we accept it?"
Buddha said, "There is no question of accepting or rejecting. Death is! It is so. Such is the nature of things: they are born one day, one day they die."
Why do you think of rejecting or accepting? If you try to accept, that simply means a kind of repression. First you must have rejected; you must be still rejecting and you are covering up your rejection with acceptance. Deep down you are angry and on the surface you are smiling, you are all smiles. Deep down you are sad; on the surface you are laughing and trying to hide the fact not only from others but from yourself too.
Friedrich Nietzsche has said, "I laugh because I am afraid that if I don't laugh I will start crying and weeping. I go on laughing just to avoid the possibility of crying and weeping. I don't want to cry and weep. I want to forget that there are tears in me."
But this is just a cover-up; this laughter is not true. This is not the laughter of the Buddhas - it can't be. It is the desperate effort of a split mind. This is schizophrenia: one part wants to cry, another part is trying to hide it. You are in conflict. But we are brought up in conflict, we have learned how to live in conflict - this has become our very life style. It is not a question of accepting.
True acceptance is not an acceptance at all. You will be surprised by my statement: true acceptance is not an acceptance at all. True acceptance is absence of rejection and acceptance. One simply knows that this is how things are - the suchness of things, tathata.
Hence one of the beautiful names of Buddha: Tathagata. The Buddhist scriptures always use the word tathagata for Buddha: one who lives in suchness, neither rejecting nor accepting, simply seeing whatsoever is the case, only reflecting.
And you ask me: How is creativity possible out of this absolute negativity? You don't know anything about creativity. Creativity comes only out of total negation, it comes out of absolute emptiness. The whole world has come out of nothingness and the whole world will one day move into nothingness.
Now the scientists have stumbled upon one of the most important discoveries ever: the discovery of the black hole. They say there are a few spots in existence, which can be called black holes, where if anything comes close it is sucked in by the black hole and it disappears, it becomes nothing.
But this is only half the story; the other half has still to be discovered. I can predict it will be discovered soon: the white hole, the other side of the black hole, from which things start coming out of nothingness. Existence goes into rest, then nothingness prevails. When the rest is over, existence again becomes active, manifest; then creativity prevails. Creativity comes out of nothingness.
The more you are a nobody, the more you know that there is no ego in you, the more creativity will flow through you. You will become a vehicle, you will become a passage. Songs will pour out of you - and music and love and joy. And whatsoever you touch will be transformed into gold, and whatsoever you say will have something poetic in it, and whatsoever you do will have grace, will have something divine about it, something sacred and holy.
Creativity is nothing that you have to do; you are the barrier - it is because of you that creativity is prevented. Make way. Don't stand in between. Move yourself away and let your void, your inner void, face existence. And the inner void will reflect the existence and, out of that reflection, creativity is born.
But I am not talking about ordinary creativity: that you compose a poem or you paint a small painting or you sculpt. These things can be done without being creative; all that you need to know is the art, the technique of doing them. Out of one hundred so-called creators it is very rare to find even one or two who are real creators; ninety-nine percent are only composers, not creators. They know how to put words together, they are clever, they are cunning, they are crafty; what they are doing is not creativity. They are putting things together - maybe in new arrangements, but there is nothing original.
The original always comes from an egoless state, it always comes when you are absent. When you are absent, consciousness is present, God is present. And then something miraculous starts happening, not by you but through you. It gives you a great feeling of humbleness and gratitude.
So don't be worried about absolute negativity; that is one of the most beautiful spaces to be in. One can be in that space through absolute positivity also, but there is a danger: your mind can play tricks with the absolute positive. But it cannot play tricks with the absolute negative. With the absolute positive it can still hope to remain in some way or other; the positive seems to be sheltering, safe.
Hence, except with Gautam the Buddha, every other religion has used the positive. It is only Buddha who has used the negative. But you must know that more people have become enlightened through Gautam Buddha's approach than through all the other approaches put together for the simple reason that with the absolute negative there is no safety, no shelter at all for the mind, for the ego. It is total death.
That's why you are confused. I am happy that you are confused. I will be more happy if your confusion becomes a chaos. I will be still more happy if you disappear into a black hole, because then the only thing possible is that you will come out of a white hole. You will be resurrected.
Crucifixion is the way of resurrection. Death is the way of being reborn.
Next: Chapter 4: A Question Of Being, Question 2
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen
| ENERGY
|
GAIN ENERGY APPRENTICE
LEVEL1
|
THE ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL
PROCESS
|
THE KARMA CLEARING
PROCESS APPRENTICE LEVEL3
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MASTERY
OF RELATIONSHIPS TANTRA APPRENTICE LEVEL4
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