The Great Zen Master Ta Hui, Chapter 27: Just being

BELOVED OSHO,

WHO IS IN THE WAY?

WHEN MASTER JUI YEN WAS DWELLING CONSTANTLY IN HIS ROOM, HE WOULD CALL TO HIMSELF, "BOSS!"

AND ALSO RESPOND TO HIMSELF, "YES?"

"BE ALERT!"

"I WILL."

"HEREAFTER, DON'T FALL FOR PEOPLE'S DECEPTIONS."

"I WON'T."

JUST AROUSE YOURSELF RIGHT HERE, AND SEE WHAT IT IS. THE ONE WHO DOES THE AROUSING ISN'T ANYONE ELSE, HE'S JUST THE ONE THAT CAN RECOGNIZE DIMNESS AND DULLNESS. HE'S YOUR OWN FUNDAMENTAL IDENTITY. THIS IS ME GIVING MEDICINE TO SUIT THE DISEASE, HAVING NO OTHER ALTERNATIVE; BRIEFLY POINTING OUT THE ROAD FOR YOU TO RETURN HOME AND SIT IN PEACE, AND THAT'S ALL. IF YOU STICK TO DEAD WORDS, AND SAY IT REALLY IS YOUR FUNDAMENTAL IDENTITY, THEN YOU'RE ACKNOWLEDGING THE CONSCIOUS SPIRIT AS YOUR SELF, AND THIS HAS EVEN LESS TO DO WITH IT. WHAT I SAID BEFORE ABOUT DEPENDING ON DIMNESS AND DULLNESS TO ENTER IS THIS. SIMPLY SEE WHAT THE ONE WHO CAN KNOW DIMNESS AND DULLNESS LIKE THIS ULTIMATELY IS. JUST LOOK RIGHT HERE, DON'T SEEK TRANSCENDENT ENLIGHTENMENT. JUST OBSERVE AND OBSERVE: SUDDENLY YOU'LL LAUGH ALOUD. BEYOND THIS, THERE'S NOTHING THAT CAN BE SAID.

Who is in the way? Nobody else except yourself. You are blocking, standing in the way of your own enlightenment. Nobody else can block the way, because the way is inwards. It is accessible only to you and absolutely to you. But how can you block the way?

It is not your real identity -- because that is the goal -- but your false personality, in which you have started believing as the real... You believe you have a certain name, you believe you have a certain caste, a certain profession, a certain religion, a certain nationality, but when you were born did you have any of these things? You were simply there without any identity. You were, but there was no idea of `I', there was no ego.

The ego is blocking the way.

The whole science of meditation is to take away the ego -- and then you don't even have to travel the way. Once the ego is no longer there, not only is the ego gone, but the way disappears too.

Suddenly you recognize... you are it; you are the treasure that you were seeking before. But you lost your treasure, forgot about it, because you become so much involved in seeking, searching, finding. Naturally, all seeking, all searching, all finding is outside.

Inside there is no space to move; there is only space enough to be still, unmoving, silent. That is your reality.

So the first thing Ta Hui is saying in this sutra is, never be deceived by priests and religious systems, theologies which tell you how to attain enlightenment, how to attain awareness -- because the very how is the problem. The more you try techniques and methods, the more you are nourishing your ego. It is very articulate as far as words are concerned, scriptures are concerned, philosophical systems are concerned. It is very articulate, but the more you nourish the ego, the more you are blocking the way.

You have to be as innocent as the newborn child, who has consciousness but who has no ego. He does not know that he is. Although we know he is, and he feels he is, still the conceptual idea of an ego, of I am, is far away. His consciousness is like a pure sky without clouds.

Once you start collecting things from the outside to create your identity... any created identity is false, because you are not what you do: you are not your profession; you are not your emotions, your thoughts; you are not your prestige, your power, your respectability. These are all components of your false identity -- hence your ego is continuously ambitious for more and more. Its desire for more and more is unending. Because it is a false phenomenon, you have to keep continuously busy nourishing it, so you don't have any time left even to look at whom you are nourishing. You are nourishing your greatest enemy.

The whole society is supportive of the ego. Then the problem becomes tremendous: your father wants you to be somebody in the world, your mother wants you to be somebody in the world, your teachers want you to be somebody in the world. All are driving you away from yourself, towards a false identity.

It is very rare to come across a person who wants you to be nobody in the world. If you can find a person who wants you to be nobody in the world, he is your master.

You have to understand clearly that you have to be reborn. Last time you were too small, too helpless. You were not aware of the ways of the world, and you trusted and loved your parents, your teachers, your priests without any doubt, so they were able to manage a false identity for you.

I was staying in a house with a friend. He had only one son; he was very rich, and the son was very friendly to me because I used to listen to all his nonsense, gibberish. Everybody was telling him, "Shut up, go and play outside!"

He became very close to me, and I asked him one day, "What are you going to become in life?"

He said, "I think I will go crazy."

I said, "Who has you given you that idea?"

He said, "It is simple: my mother wants me to be a doctor, my father wants me to be an engineer, one uncle wants me to be a politician, another uncle wants me to continue in our family business... And if I have to become all these things, naturally I think only one thing will happen: I will go crazy. And nobody asks me; you are the first person to ask, `What do you want to become?' They have their ideas and they are imposing their ideas on me. They are all powerful; they are quarreling amongst themselves, nobody is concerned with me. I am not even part of the discussion, and they are deciding my destiny."

I said, "If you are that much alert, nobody can drive you crazy. Just remember one thing: whatever you want to become, don't move from that position -- no compromise. Insist that this is what you want to become."

And he asked a fundamental question: "But I don't know exactly what I want to become."

I said, "That is very easy to find, because in fact the whole idea of becoming is the idea of creating a false personality. You are a being, you are already where you want to be. This is the time -- this childhood is the most precious time -- when you can be silent, when you can be inside yourself more easily because there are not many obstructions, many thoughts, businesses, problems, anxieties, worries."

It is so easy for a child to move into meditation, but no society up to now has made it a point that every child should be introduced first to meditation, and then left to his own understanding, what he starts feeling, what he is. Then that isness, that being, goes on growing, flowering, becomes fruitful.

But a strange calamity has happened to humanity, and the calamity is that people who love you without an understanding at all -- but with all good intentions -- try to make something out of you. They don't see the point that you are already your being, and your being has to grow according to its own spontaneity.

If they really love with awareness and alertness, then they will support whatever you want to become -- even if you want just to become a musician or a painter or a dancer or a flute-player, with not much chance of becoming world-famous, not much chance of leaving your name written in golden letters in the history books. I have simply heard about this... I have looked in many history books, and I have not seen anybody's name written in golden letters. Once a man is dead, who cares? Certainly, if the dead men were writing history they would write at least their names in golden letters.

Think how many millions of people have lived before you and disappeared into thin air without leaving any trace. They were all trying hard to be somebody and they were all miserable; they all lived a life of tremendous anguish. Once you want to become somebody... that is not natural to you, you are creating a great tension that will follow you your whole life like a shadow. And as days pass the tension will become bigger and bigger.

People ask me, "How can we live a life without tensions?" One of the education ministers used to come to me because he was so tense, so worried... and somebody suggested to him that he should see me. He told me, "I want to get rid of all these worries and tensions."

I said, "That is not difficult. But remember, then you cannot be the chief minister."

He said, "Why?"

I said, "You don't understand the simple arithmetic of life. All your worries are about how to become the chief minister. I know you: first you were just an MLA and your worries were about how to become a deputy minister. You became a deputy minister -- then your worries were how to become the minister. Now you have become the minister, your worries are how to become the chief minister. Do you think that is the end of the road?"

He said, "No, that is not the end of the road. I can see beyond it. Once I am chief minister I would like to go to the central cabinet."

I said, "Then first you do all these things. When you have become the prime minister, either you will go insane.... Most probably by the time you become the prime minister you will become senile.

"But with these ambitions you cannot be without tensions; and if you want really to be without tensions, without worries, without anxieties, then get out of this mad race to become somebody more important, more powerful. Then just be whatever you are, and relaxation comes very easily."

Tensions are our guests, we have invited them. Relaxation is our nature. We don't have to invite it. You don't have to relax; you have just to stop inviting tensions, and relaxation will start on its own accord. In your very being, in every fiber, in every cell of your being there will be relaxation. This relaxation is the beginning of meditation.

In this relaxed state nobody is hindering the path. You are standing before the temple of your being, and the doors are open. They have never been closed -- existence can't be so cruel. Once you are not standing in the way...

Rabiya al-Adabiya was a Sufi woman, very unique. Man has not allowed women any opportunity to grow in the spiritual dimension. Only a few women have escaped from the slavery of man, very few; they can be counted on ten fingers, and Rabiya would be at the very top. She was going to the marketplace to fetch some vegetables and she saw a famous religious man, Hasan, kneeling down in front of a mosque -- outside, where people leave their shoes, because he used to say he was not worthy enough to enter into the temple of God. For years he had been praying five times a day before the mosque, and his only prayer was, "Father, open the doors, let me in! How long have I to wait?"

Rabiya had heard this many times while coming and going, and one day she could not resist the temptation: she hit hard on Hasan's head. This is very irreligious. When somebody is praying you should not disturb him -- and this was not an ordinary disturbance.

Hasan simply jumped up, and he said, "Rabiya, are you mad, or what?"

She said, "I am not mad. The doors are always open! What kind of nonsense are you continually praying to God? `Open the doors, let me in'... who is preventing you? And who has given you the idea that the doors are closed? I say to you, the doors are open! It is just you who is standing in the way. If you really want to enter, you can enter this very moment. The only condition to be fulfilled is that you should be as an innocent child, and right now you can enter into the temple. But as a religious saint, with a great religious ego, a pious ego...."

The pious ego is the most poisonous ego. Somebody is egoistic because he has so much money -- but still he knows that death will take it all away. Somebody is bragging because he is the president of a country. He knows that at the next election he will be going down the drain -- if he remains alive, because most probably he will be assassinated before that.

In America, twenty percent of the presidents have been assassinated -- and this is the most civilized country. Either they are assassinated or somebody throws them into the toilet and flushes it. So even if you are a president or a prime minister, it does not matter; you know deep down that soon you will be thrown off your throne. I have always wondered why the throne is called a throne -- perhaps it is the place from where people are thrown. Whoever has given it the name must have been a man of great understanding.

But a man who has a religious ego is the most poisonous because he thinks he is holier-than-thou, higher than everybody else, and he has some spirituality which will go with him beyond death. Everybody else's ego and identity will be left behind on this side of death; only the saint can claim, "My ego is going to go beyond death itself." He does not call it ego; he calls it humbleness, simplicity, religiousness. He gives it beautiful names, decorates it as beautifully as possible.

But even if you have the idea of yourself as spiritual, you are not innocent. No child has the idea that he is spiritual. Take the child, the newborn child, as the criterion: he is, and yet he has no idea of any ego. That will give you the insight that you can also just be: if the child can do it, what is the problem for you?

Without any ego, you can also just be.

This just being is what I call meditation.

Not chanting some stupid name or some stupid mantra... that is not meditation. It is good for monkeys but not for man. Monkeys cannot sit without chewing something; if they cannot get anything else, they will get chewing-gum. The people who are continuously repeating a mantra are doing nothing but using the word, the language, as chewing-gum -- and cheap, because you will have to pay something for chewing-gum. Chewing-gum lasts long, but still it gets finished, but your mantra is always there -- whenever you want to chew you will start chewing.

Meditation has nothing to do with mantras and chantings. Meditation is simply the pure consciousness of a child regained -- paradise regained. It was once yours, but you had lost it, you forgot it. Because it was yours you started looking all over the world, avoiding just that which was in your very heart. You were born with only consciousness, and everything else you have gathered after that. Whatever you have gathered in the mind after your childhood, put it aside -- and you will be no longer in the way. This simple understanding, and you will find the doors of the temple of your being open.

Nobody is preventing you from realizing yourself.

And to realize oneself is to realize God.

There is no difference.

Ta Hui relates a beautiful Zen anecdote: WHEN MASTER JUI YEN WAS DWELLING CONSTANTLY IN HIS ROOM, HE WOULD CALL TO HIMSELF, "BOSS!"

AND ALSO RESPOND TO HIMSELF, "YES SIR?"

"BE ALERT!"

"I WILL."

"HEREAFTER, DON'T FALL FOR PEOPLE'S DECEPTIONS."

"I WON'T."

His disciples were very much disturbed because he was a great master and he had thousands of disciples. This was the first thing he would do when he woke up in the morning, before getting out of bed. First he would call, "Boss!" and then say, "Yes, sir." "Remain alert," "I will." "Don't be deceived by people and all their expectations." "I won't." After going through this dialogue with himself he would get out of bed.

His disciples felt a little uneasy about it. If somebody else comes to know, how are they going to explain? They will say, "Your master is insane. Why are you wasting your life and your time with this insane man?"

Finally they gathered courage and asked master Jui Yen, "What is the secret? Very early in the morning you start, in the day time once in a while you repeat it, and when you go to sleep again.... We have heard many mantras, many chantings, but this is simply made up by yourself. You ask the question and you answer the question -- we are very much embarrassed."

Jui Yen said, "You need not be embarrassed. I simply want to assure myself that I am not standing in the way. When I say, `Boss,' I'm calling to my being. My body is a servant, my mind is a servant, my being -- which is deathless -- is the boss. And when I call `Boss,' and the answer comes, `Yes?'... `Be alert,' because that is our whole process of meditation, remaining alert, not to forget alertness. Whatever you are doing, an undercurrent of alertness should continue. And the determination again and again arises in me, `I will.' `And don't fall for people's deceptions.'"

People are continuously deceiving you -- perhaps not knowingly, perhaps they don't want to deceive you, but they are unconscious and they are behaving almost like a somnambulist in his sleep.

People are giving you ideas: somebody says to you, "You are so beautiful" -- and it is really difficult to deny his idea, it is so ego-fulfilling. Perhaps he has his own design why he is calling you so beautiful; perhaps that is the beginning of cheating you, persuading you for something.

I used to know a man -- the whole city thought that he was mad, but I watched him very closely. He was one of the sanest men I have come across, and his sanity was that nobody could deceive him. If you had said to him, "You are very beautiful," he would say, "Wait, define beauty, what do you mean by beautiful? You will have to convince me. I cannot let you go so easily -- and what is the purpose of calling me beautiful?" And it is very difficult to define beauty, almost impossible.

If somebody would say to him, "You are very intelligent"... the same problem. Only on one point he would never argue with anyone. If people told him, "You are mad!" -- he would say, "That's perfectly right, I am mad. From a madman you cannot expect anything: you cannot ask, `Can I borrow some money from you?' The moment you say `mad,' you have put me outside the society, you have made me an individual. Now you cannot manipulate me."

He used to be a professor, but because of his strange behavior he was thrown out of his college. I used to go to him when I was a student. I liked the man very much. He played the flute so beautifully; I would simply go in and sit, and I never asked anything and I never said anything. One day he looked at me and said, "It seems you are saner than me."

I asked him, "What do you mean by saner?"

He said, "Right, absolutely right. You have got the point. I will never ask anything and never say anything. You are always welcome; there is no need to go through any social ritual. You can simply come and rest, sit."

We became friendly. He was living in poverty, but he was immensely happy. He said, "I always wanted to be a flute player, never to be a professor. Just my parents forced me... but thanks to God the college people expelled me. Now I am absolutely free, and because people think I am mad nobody bothers me. I play my flute, I write songs...."

He has translated into Hindi the poetry of Omar Khayyam. There are at least a dozen Hindi translations of the poetry of Omar Khayyam -- some done by great poets -- but none comes even close to his. And he lived a life of anonymity. It was I who insisted that his book should be published.

He said, "Who is going to listen to me? I am a madman."

I said, "Don't be worried. I will approach publishers and I will not mention your name in the beginning. First let them see the manuscript -- because there are so many translations, but your translation is not only a translation but in some way an improvement."

I have read Kahlil Gibran, I have read Omar Khayyam. He was interested in these two men and was slowly, whenever he had time, translating them. But I told him, "No translation comes close to yours, and listening to you singing Omar Khayyam I sometimes feel perhaps the original Omar Khayyam does not have that quality, that much poetry, because he was not an insane man; he was a mathematician." Now, one cannot hope for a mathematician to write great poetry. These are opposite poles, poetry and mathematics -- what do they have in common?

Finally I persuaded a publisher... because he was also amazed and he was continuously asking who the translator was. When he was absolutely convinced that this was the best translation, then I told him the name. He said, "My God, but I used to think he is a madman."

I said, "In this insane world, to be sane is to be mad. He is not insane at all, but he enjoys this idea that people have forgotten about him. Now nobody expects anything from him, nobody expects that he should behave in a certain way. He has attained freedom by being condemned as a madman. He is completely at ease with himself, he goes on doing his own thing and he is immensely happy."

This man died very soon after. Perhaps he was poor and he could not afford medicine -- he had tuberculosis -- but he died so peacefully and so joyously... singing a song of Omar Khayyam. I was present when he died. The song that he sang last says... in Hindi, just as in English or Arabic, the body is called the earth. The word `human' comes from humus, and humus means mud. The word `adami' or `adam' comes also from mud.

The song that he was singing and died singing was, "When I die, don't take my body to the funeral or to the cemetery. The earth in my body belongs to the pub" -- he was a drunkard -- "so please let my body be put in a grave inside the pub. I will be dead but others who will be alive... if they can just drop a few drops of wine over my grave, that will be enough satisfaction for me."

You would not call him a saint, you would not call him religious -- he was not, but he lived a life of utter simplicity, of tremendous beauty. He never harmed anybody, and there was a shine in his eyes because he knows something which other people don't know.

Your ego is not you.

You are beyond yourself.

If you are alert you will simply move to the beyond -- because awareness is not a faculty of the mind, nor is it possible for the ego to be aware. If you are alert and aware, the only thing that can be aware within you is "the Boss," your being.

Master Jui Yen is absolutely right to remind himself and to remind his disciples, "But don't forget for a moment who is the master in you." If the mind is the master you are living in illusions, and if your consciousness is the master all illusions are left far behind. You have come to realize the reality.

JUST AROUSE YOURSELF RIGHT HERE, AND SEE WHAT IT IS. Don't say, "I will try some day"; don't say, "I will try tomorrow" -- because tomorrow is not certain. You don't have any power over the future. If you become accustomed to postponing, tomorrow will become today, and again you will postpone for tomorrow. That will become your habit, a mechanical habit. If you understand, then JUST AROUSE YOURSELF RIGHT HERE, AND SEE WHAT IT IS.

It is not a question of practicing, disciplining, going through rituals -- all those things take time. But becoming aware does not take time. The only question is: Are you ready to experience awareness? -- because it will disturb many things in your illusory life. If you are ready, then this moment is the moment -- not the next moment. Then see the reality around you: these same trees will look greener, the same flowers will look immensely psychedelic, the same sun rays will make you full of ecstasy.

As far as the inner world is concerned... if you are aware, you are aware of your immortality, you are aware of your divineness, you are aware that life continues -- that birth and death are simple episodes in the long eternal pilgrimage of life.

All fear will disappear, and suddenly your life will have a lightness, unburdened. You will walk, but your walk will have the quality of a dance. You will talk, but your talk will have the quality of silence. Then, whatever you will do will have a qualitative difference. You may have done the same thing before, and you may be doing the same thing again; for the outsiders it may not be visible that a great difference has happened, but to you it will certainly be visible.

There was one mystic in India who was a potter -- his name was Gora. Even after becoming enlightened he continued to make the same pottery as he was making before, but now his work had a totally different quality. Now he felt he was preparing those pots for nobody else but for God. Before he used to make the pots in such a way that they were soon broken, weak, so that he could supply his customers with new pots. Now he was making pots with such care, with such love, that they will not break ordinarily as his old pots used to.

His disciples said, "Now you are wasting more time on making things."

He said, "Obviously. Now every customer that comes to me is a disguised God. He may not know, but I know. I cannot deceive God... and I would love for my pot to serve God as long as possible, so I will make it as beautiful as I can."

Even kings used to come to his gatherings. Rich people were also his followers, and they all said, "Gora, it is better that now you stop doing this work. We can provide you with everything that you need."

He said, "It is not a question of business; it is my prayer, it is my worship."

A man of enlightenment makes his whole life a prayer, a worship. Whatever he is doing is qualitatively different, it has a grace. It comes not just as a commodity to be sold, it is a piece of art... and the customers are no longer ordinary human beings. To the person of awareness the whole existence becomes divine. He cannot hurt even a tree. Out of this awareness comes a life of non-violence.

Mahatma Gandhi was trying just the opposite way. He was trying to practice non-violence, which goes against the whole science of meditation. You cannot practice non-violence. You can force yourself to be non-violent, but deep down you will remain violent, and it will show in small things. He never could attain the non-violence that comes naturally to the meditator, because he never knew anything about meditation. All that he knew about religion was the very ordinary religion practiced by the people, the masses, in their unconsciousness. His religion was only praying to God.

When you don't know whether God exists or not, how can your prayer be authentic? and what prayer? Either you will be praising God -- but there are no words to praise him -- or you will be asking for some changes in your life, asking for some things to be given to you. Prayer cannot be begging and prayer cannot be like advice to God: Do things the way I think....

A prayer comes out of meditation also, but that prayer is wordless, a pure gratitude, a thankfulness. And it is not addressed to any particular God as a person, because there is nobody like a person sitting somewhere high in the sky listening to your prayers.

The meditator comes to know that God is spread all over existence. It is better not to call him God, but to call it just the quality of godliness. He feels grateful to the river, to the ocean, to the moon, to the sun, to the stars, and it is simply a feeling in his heart. It cannot be brought to the lips through words, because the ocean does not understand any language. Neither does a beautiful sunset or the starry night... but they all understand the language of silence and gratitude.

THE ONE WHO DOES THE AROUSING IS NOT ANYONE ELSE, HE'S JUST THE ONE THAT CAN RECOGNIZE DIMNESS AND DULLNESS.

Who is within you? The real, the immortal, the eternal, the divine... he is the witness who can see dullness, dimness. Who can watch all the clouds that pass on the screen of the mind? -- thoughts, emotions, moods...

The watcher is your authentic being. He is your own fundamental identity. The watcher is your fundamental identity, and any other identity card that you are carrying, any other passport that you are carrying... they all are just arbitrary.

The authentic identity is only one, and that is of the witnessing self, who simply sees. He is not a doer. It does not mean that things don't happen around the witness; they happen -- but they happen spontaneously, without any effort, without any tension, without any deliberate action, but just out of spontaneity. Just as flowers blossom and birds sing and trees grow... things happen around the witness spontaneously.

THIS IS ME GIVING MEDICINE TO SUIT THE DISEASE, HAVING NO OTHER ALTERNATIVE -- and there is no other alternative, remember. The witness cannot be replaced by anything else. That's why I say again and again that there are no religions in the world. There cannot be... because if the self-nature has no alternative, then how can you have alternative religions?

The witness is one; it is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Jew... it is neither theist nor atheist...

It is a pure clarity of seeing.

It is just pure consciousness.

It is just like a mirror, reflecting.

Have you come across mirrors which are Christian, Catholic, Hindu, Mohammedan? A mirror is just a mirror; its function is mirroring, it reflects.

Your fundamental identity is just like a consciousness which has the capacity to reflect and to respond. Whatever comes out of your consciousness is always fresh, always spontaneous, always graceful, always sincere, always true to reality. It is in accord with existence. There is a tremendous synchronicity between you and the whole.

BRIEFLY POINTING OUT THE ROAD FOR YOU TO RETURN HOME AND SIT IN PEACE, AND THAT'S ALL.

Yes, that's all!

IF YOU STICK TO DEAD WORDS, AND SAY IT REALLY IS YOUR FUNDAMENTAL IDENTITY, THEN YOU ARE ACKNOWLEDGING THE CONSCIOUS SPIRIT AS YOUR SELF, AND THIS HAS EVEN LESS TO DO WITH IT. WHAT I SAID BEFORE ABOUT DEPENDING ON DIMNESS AND DULLNESS TO ENTER IS THIS. SIMPLY SEE WHAT THE ONE WHO CAN KNOW DIMNESS AND DULLNESS LIKE THIS ULTIMATELY IS.

First, remove your ego from the way; then only consciousness remains. Now let the consciousness know itself. Because there is nothing else left to know, and consciousness has the capacity to know, it can become a "self-knowing."

That's what Socrates means when he says, "Know thyself." I have made some addition to Socrates' saying because to me it seems incomplete: Know thyself, because that is the only way of being thyself. So know thyself and be thyself... and you have come home... and there is no other alternative.

JUST LOOK RIGHT HERE, DON'T SEEK TRANSCENDENT ENLIGHTENMENT.

This is a very pregnant statement by Ta Hui. He is saying to you that even seeking transcendent enlightenment will become a barrier. Any seeking takes you away from yourself. Don't seek anything, so that you can remain within yourself.

Transcendent enlightenment seems to be different from money or power or prestige... people think seeking transcendent meditation or transcendent enlightenment is a different thing from seeking worldly objects. It is not.

The question is not of the object, the question is of seeking, and the seeking is the same. What you are seeking does not matter; every seeking takes you away from yourself.

Don't seek, don't search. Just sit within yourself, with no desire, with no ambition, nowhere to go. Relax at the very center of your being. This is transcendent enlightenment -- but you can get there only if you don't seek it.

JUST OBSERVE AND OBSERVE; SUDDENLY YOU WILL LAUGH ALOUD. BEYOND THIS THERE IS NOTHING THAT CAN BE SAID.

The last word that can be said is, "Observe and observe, watch and watch." Then you will see the whole ridiculousness of your life: that which you have been doing was as stupid as a dog trying to catch its own tail. Sometimes you may have seen it -- the dog becomes more and more intrigued with the phenomenon. This is strange -- it is so close... and when he tries to jump, naturally the tail also jumps, and the distance remains the same. The dog becomes almost frantic because he does not know it is his own tail.

Once you are silently conscious your whole life will look ridiculous. What have you been doing but chasing your own tail -- which was always yours; there was no need to chase it. So the last thing we have heard from the mystics is a sudden loud laughter. After that is absolute silence and serenity. That laughter is the last thing, and beyond that nothing can be said. Beyond that there is the infinite, the eternal to experience... but that is beyond words, nothing can be said about it.

But if you have been able to laugh at your own ridiculousness, that proves you have become an observer, detached from your mind, from your body. Now you can easily understand that what you have been doing up to now can be done only in unconsciousness.

I have heard: A man was suddenly awakened by his wife and told, "I have heard that my husband is coming. I have heard the horn of his car, he has just parked the car."

So the naked fellow got up and said, "What shall I do?"

The woman said, "You just jump out of the window."

It was a cold night and it was raining. He jumped out of the window, and only then he realized, "What nonsense! I am the husband!" But just old habit... he must have been sleeping with other women. The wife must be sleeping with other men.

If you watch life it is ridiculous, and if you can laugh at yourself, that is the last boundary line. Beyond that begins the wordless experience of silence. But the laughter of a man of observation also has a different quality: you always laugh at others, he laughs at himself. Laughing at others is a little cruel -- there is some violence hidden in it -- but laughing at oneself is a great awakening.

Ta Hui is giving his experiences as clearly as it is possible to give them in language. I agree with him categorically that every enlightened man has laughed. That was the boundary line of moving from this world to the world of the beyond. Before moving beyond, he had to laugh -- for the simple reason that he could see his whole life was nothing but hilarious. Up to now he was doing it so seriously because he was almost asleep; but once awake, all seriousness is fake. He was doing things which now he cannot do even if he wants to... they are irrational, they are illogical, they are unintelligent.

Start by observation, come to a great laughter... and go beyond. This is in essence the whole of religion.

The world needs religion, but it does not need religions. That is also ridiculous. You have one science, and you never ask whether this science is Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan. About the objective world you have one science, and about the inner world... you have three hundred religions in the world. This is ridiculous.

The man of awareness comes to understand that religiousness is needed, but religions are no more needed.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Zen

The Great Zen Master Ta Hui

Chapter-27

Just being