| ENERGY
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GAIN ENERGY APPRENTICE
LEVEL1
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THE ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL
PROCESS
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THE KARMA CLEARING
PROCESS APPRENTICE LEVEL3
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MASTERY
OF RELATIONSHIPS TANTRA APPRENTICE LEVEL4
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I CELEBRATE MYSELF: GOD IS NOW WHERE, LIFE IS NOW HERE
Chapter 6: Come to your own festival
Question 1
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen I Celebrate Myself
Question 1
The first question:
SO-CALLED "MODERN CHRISTIANS" PARTICULARLY YOUNG PROTESTANTS, TALK ABOUT GOD AS IF HE IS NOT A PERSON -- LIKE "GOD IS EVERYWHERE, IN EVERY BEING, IN EVERY TREE, IN NATURE" -- NOT A PERSON HIDDEN IN THE CLOUDS.
DO THEY GET THE POINT OR IS IT JUST OUT OF CUNNINGNESS, BECAUSE THEY SEE THAT THE OLD-MAN GOD HAS NO GROUNDS AT ALL AND NO FUTURE?
It is out of absolute cunningness, because they go on saying that God is not a person. Then why do they go to the church? Then why do they continue to pray to God as a person? If God is not a person, prayer should be stopped, going to the church should be stopped. If God is not a person, then Jesus cannot be his begotten son. Then you have to drop the idea that Jesus is related to God especially.
If God is really everywhere, then he is no more in Jesus Christ than in you. Then why should you worship? Then what is the function of the priest if there is no God as a person? The priest has to disappear.
That's why I say these people are simply repeating the approach of Zen -- which has become known to the West now -- that there is no God. But they cannot say it exactly, "There is no God" -- it hurts their programmed minds. So they are finding excuses in such a way that it appears God is, but it is not a person.
But they don't understand the implications. They say, "God is everywhere." If God is everywhere, then no place can be called sacred. If God is everywhere, in every being, then you cannot be violent to the animals, you cannot hunt animals, you cannot kill animals for your food. You are killing God. If God is in every being, then everybody has to be vegetarian. Nobody can be non-vegetarian; otherwise you are killing God and eating God.
In every tree in nature ... and you are cutting trees, you are destroying the ecology of nature.
Just when India became independent, forty years ago, there were nearabout one hundred and fifty million hectares of trees in the country. Now there are only sixty million hectares. Over half of the trees in India have been cut. And the Christians are saying now that God is everywhere, even in trees ...? Hindus have been saying it for centuries that God is everywhere. That is the meaning of `omnipresent'. And if God is everywhere, then why do you go to the church, why do you go to the temple, why do you go to the mosque? And why do you listen to the sermons? Why do you carry a Holy Bible or a holy Koran?
I don't think a non-personal God can write the Vedas and the Bible and the Koran -- or a non-personal God can send messengers and prophets and messiahs. Then if you are honest all your holy scriptures have to be burned. And all your churches have to be demolished, if you are honest. And all your priesthood has to be told: "You have exploited enough; now start working. Unless you work you will not have anything to eat."
If you don't do that then it is mere cunningness, because you cannot prove the personal God anymore. You are trying to create an impersonal God, but your whole religion continues to be the same. It does not change.
It is such a great change from a personal God to an impersonal God that your whole religion will go through a revolution -- no church, no priest, no holy scripture. Then the whole existence becomes the holy scripture.
And if God is everywhere there is no need to pray. The closest is your own being, so first find God in your own being.
But still these Christians are not interested in meditation. These Christians are still praying, to an impersonal God.
Prayer is absolutely absurd. And if these Christians do understand the implications, then Christianity disappears and the pagan appears again. That was the only problem. Christianity killed millions of pagans who believed in the whole of nature, in the whole of existence as divine; who worshipped trees, who worshipped the moon, who worshipped the sun, who worshipped rivers, mountains, anything -- because everything was sacred. Christianity destroyed them, and converted those pagans into Christians -- from an impersonal God to a personal God, from natural people into repressive maniacs!
And now if you again disperse the personal God into the whole of existence, you will have to disperse the whole of Christianity. You will have to disperse all the religions, and the whole earth will be full of pagans, Zorbas.
That is my effort -- to create the Zorba as a solid foundation for a buddha.
Zorba is the earth.
Buddha is the sky.
And when these two meet there is communion. When these two meet, there is synchronicity. When these two meet there is revolution. You are no longer the same, nor is the world anymore the same. Everything changes in a totally new perspective. New doors open -- and a new human being, and a new, fresh existence without any priests to poison your nature.
No, these people, the so-called new Christian theologians are just deceiving themselves and other Christians, because their whole structure remains the same. Just God ... because they cannot support by logic or evidence, and they can see the point of Zen, at least intellectually. Not to feel inferior, they are talking about the impersonal God.
That's what Eckhart was doing, that was what Saint Bernard was doing -- trying to make God impersonal. But they don't understand that it means destroying your whole structure of religion. If they truly understand the phenomenon they will destroy all Bibles, all churches, popes, the Vatican ... all should be finished, there is no need. God is everywhere -- there is no need for any priest to stand between you and God. He is surrounding you, he is in the air, and he is in your blood and in your bones. He is in your very marrow and he is in your inner space -- as he is everywhere.
But to know that he is everywhere is not a logical conclusion. To know he is everywhere has to be an existential experience. First you have to go into yourself. Unless you know it in yourself, you cannot say it is in the trees and it is in every animal and it is in every living being. You are a living being -- first enter into yourself.
These Christians are not talking about meditation at all. So all the talk is simply to deceive themselves and others, as if they have risen to the same height of Zen. Just by talking you cannot do that. You have to give evidence, proof, by your every gesture, by your every action, by your every word.
But I watch, I have been aware of these new Christian theologians, and their behavior is the same as any Christian. That behavior proves that their understanding is just to camouflage people's minds, to create confusion. They are protecting the old God with a new name -- "impersonal God" -- because their whole religion remains the same.
How can it remain the same if God is impersonal? That is the equivalent to there being no God only godliness, a quality pervading the whole cosmos.
There is a beautiful story ....
al-Hillaj Mansoor, who became finally a great enlightened being, was murdered by the Mohammedans. He was a poor man and he wanted to go to Kaaba because it is the duty of every Mohammedan, at least one time in your life, that you should go for haj, for a holy pilgrimage to Kaaba. If you don't go at least one time you are not a Mohammedan. So even the poorest Mohammedans sell their houses, their land, and go at least one time to Kaaba.
Mansoor was very poor. His father and mother died when he was very young, so he was almost an orphan, a beggar. The neighbors helped him up to his youth and then he started -- because there was no education for him .... People were going ... there is a special month every year when Mohammedans from all over the world go to Kaaba. Many people from the village were going, and he started telling them, "I would like to come." But they said, "You don't have any money." So he collected money from every house. But by the time he had collected money, the other pilgrims had already left.
So alone, he started his journey. Just outside the village, underneath a tree was sitting a man who was going to become his master -- Junnaid. And he said to the young man, "Where are you going?"
al-Hillaj said, "I am going to Kaaba. All the pilgrims from my village have already left."
Junnaid said, "Come here!" The voice of Junnaid was such ... his eyes were such that al-Hillaj could not say no. He said, "Give me the money! There is no need to go anywhere. I am the Kaaba and I have come to your village just for you. You can make seven rounds of me, just as the other pilgrims will be making seven rounds of Kaaba. That is a stone -- I am a living human being."
al-Hillaj was so magnetically drawn to the man that he gave all his money to him, and made seven rounds.
And Junnaid said, "Now you can go to your village. And I will be leaving tomorrow morning, so if you want to come with me, you can come."
He went to the village. The villagers asked, "What happened? You had gone to Kaaba" -- it used to take three months walking to Kaaba, and three months to come back -- "and you are back just within half an hour! Where is the money?"
al-Hillaj said, "What to do? I met Kaaba just outside the village. He was sitting under a tree."
They said, "You idiot! You have given the money to THAT Kaaba?"
He said, "He asked, and he told me to make seven rounds around him. So I made seven rounds and I am feeling so fulfilled, and so dignified that Kaaba himself has come."
They said, "You come with us. We want to see who this man is who has cheated you. You are a simpleton! How can Kaaba come here, and for you?"
He said, "You can come. Tomorrow morning I am leaving with Kaaba."
He said, "You come with us. First let us see who this fellow is -- he is a man?"
al-Hillaj said, "Of course. And a very magical man. I think it is Kaaba personified."
They said, "You keep quiet, you just follow us." The whole village gathered, and they could see. The man had a tremendous light around him -- it was night now -- and they could feel as they started coming closer to him, that he was in deep silence with closed eyes. The light was radiating, and al-Hillaj was not wrong, there was an immense attraction, the man had charisma.
They all went around him and Junnaid opened his eyes and said, "First put the money! I have traveled to your village and you are doing your haj without paying the money. Bring the money first!"
al-Hillaj said, "Now you know that he is not an ordinary Kaaba, he speaks too!"
And the whole village, whatsoever they could bring, brought and gave to him.
Junnaid allowed them to make a round, and the day after, he left with al-Hillaj. The whole village had come to send them off. They thought, "This al-Hillaj, although he was an orphan, proved to be more blessed than we are. He has found a master."
Only the enlightened man can say such a thing, that there is no God, because he knows God is a quality, it is the fragrance; you cannot catch hold of it, but it is everywhere. Wherever life is, wherever laughter is, wherever love is, that quality pervades, penetrates your heart. And in meditation it goes to the deepest part of your being. Only then can you say there is no God. That does not mean you are atheist, that simply means you are denying a personal God, a creator God, and you are accepting existence itself as divine. But then there is no church and then there is no priest, and then there is no holy scripture.
If these neo-theologians are really sincere, honest human beings, they should start destroying the holy scriptures -- at least the Christian ones, since they are Christians. And they should start demolishing the Vatican, taking away the power from the priests, and abolishing the monasteries.
But they are not doing anything of the kind, so it is all bullshit -- just bullshit and nothing else.
The sutra:
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
SHODAI, WHO WAS BORN IN 738 IN CHINA AND DIED IN 820, WAS A DISCIPLE OF SEKITO.
SHODAI STAYED AT MOUNT NANGAKU UNDER SEKITO FOR THREE YEARS, THEN WENT TO MOUNT SHUKO WHERE HE SAW MA TZU.
MA TZU ASKED, "WHAT DID YOU COME HERE FOR?"
You can see the difference between so-called religious people and the Zen masters. Ma Tzu knew that he was coming from Sekito. Rather than feeling happy that he had got a disciple from Sekito and his number of disciples had at least increased by one, Ma Tzu said, "What did you come here for? Sekito was enough for you."
This is the beauty of Zen -- an immense reverence for everyone who is enlightened. There is no competition at all. Never heard of in the world of Zen is the word `competition' ... no effort to convert anybody. Ma Tzu simply asked him, "Why have you come here? For what? Everything was available where you are coming from."
SHODAI SAID, "I CAME HERE FOR BUDDHA'S BIRTH CELEBRATIONS, JAMUNA DARSHAN."
Buddha's birthday was coming. And Buddha's birthday has a very special coincidence. He was born on the same fullmoon night as he became enlightened, in the same month, on the same fullmoon night, as he died eighty-two years afterwards -- the same month, the same fullmoon night. A strange man -- birth, enlightenment, death, all happened on the same fullmoon night, in the same month of the year. So his birthday is also his enlightenment day. It is also his death celebration. So in a single day all three experiences happened. That's why for Zen the full moon has become something special -- because everything that happened to Buddha happened on the fullmoon night.
So in every Zen monastery on the fullmoon night people just sit under their trees and watch the full moon. The full moon has become symbolically connected with Gautam Buddha. And just watching and witnessing the full moon, they enter into deep meditation.
The fullmoon night has a specialness that is now being recognized by science itself. They have to approach it from the wrong side, because scientists are living on the wrong side of the earth, in the West. They became aware that more murders happen on the fullmoon night, more suicides happen on the fullmoon night, more people go insane on the fullmoon night ... strange. This fullmoon night certainly affects people and their psychology. It affects the ocean -- that is a known fact. On the fullmoon night waves become very tidal -- as if the ocean is trying to reach to the moon. Man consists of eighty percent of ocean water, so something in him also starts feeling a subtle vibration. Scientists say that the first living being was the fish. Man is the other end of progress -- in the beginning was the fish. So we have a very deep connection. Our real forefathers lived in the ocean -- they were fish.
So don't eat fish! You are eating your own forefathers, and that is nasty! And I see people carrying tinned fish -- forefathers tinned! And people love eating fish ....
If life was born in the ocean then life is bound to be affected when the ocean is affected. There is a deep connection, underlying currents. But Western psychologists became aware from the wrong side: suicide, murder, madness. The East became aware that more people have become enlightened on a fullmoon night; in fact, almost all except one, Mahavira.
He became enlightened on the no-moon night, amawas. The fullmoon night is called purnima -- the moon has become perfect, purna. And the no-moon night is when there is no moon at all, absolute darkness. Except Mahavira, nobody has become enlightened on amawas, no-moon night. Mahavira's name was not Mahavira -- Mahavira means a great warrior. His name was Vardhaman. But because he became enlightened on amawas, no-moon night, he proved that he could go against the current. It was natural for everybody to become enlightened on the fullmoon night, but this fellow Mahavira tried to go against the normal order of things, and still managed to become enlightened.
In India, people have completely forgotten why every year on a particular amawas, no-moon night, they celebrate Diwali, a festival of lights. You must have seen people putting all kinds of candles, lamps, lights in their houses. This is the night when Mahavira became enlightened. And this festival is in remembrance of Mahavira but nobody even thinks of Mahavira.
Those firecrackers are in celebration of Mahavira. He certainly did something unique which never happened before and never happened afterwards. So it is perfectly right to call him Mahavira, a great warrior. A very strong man ... otherwise it is almost impossible for anyone to become enlightened on the no-moon night.
In Zen, on the fullmoon night of every month, they watch the moon the whole night. And as they go on witnessing the moon, a deep tranquility and silence descends over them, particularly on the night when Gautam Buddha was born, became enlightened, and died. So this is a special, very special night for the people belonging to the small stream of Zen.
Shodai said, "I have come here for Buddha's birthdate celebrations." Ma Tzu was a very famous master; Sekito was not that famous. Slowly, slowly he became famous after his death, but Ma Tzu was famous while he was alive -- very famous, because of his strange behavior. Shodai must have thought that on the celebrations of this moon, it would be good to go to Ma Tzu -- something might transpire. So he said, "I have come here to celebrate the birth of Gautam the Buddha."
Ma Tzu said, "Buddha has no birth, no death -- Buddha is eternal. Life has no beginning, no end, it is eternal. The very word `birth' belongs to the world of delusion, because that which is authentic in you is never born. It has been coming from one house to another house, from one body to another body, but it is eternal in itself. So no birth, no death happens to it. It happens only to the outside of the house, which becomes tattered so it has to be renewed, or else you have to move into a new house."
Ma Tzu said, "Buddha has no birth, no death. The very idea of birth and death is delusion. YOU ARE FROM MOUNT NANGAKU, BUT IT SEEMS THAT YOU HAVE NOT YET KNOWN THAT YOU NEED SEKITO. He is your master. I don't think it is the right time for you, or that there is any need to change your master. You have not allowed your master to transform you yet. SO YOU SHOULD GO BACK. You cannot stay here."
HEARING THAT, SHODAI WENT TO SEKITO. ON MEETING THE MASTER, SHODAI ASKED SEKITO, "WHAT IS BUDDHA?"
All the way coming back he must have been thinking, "Ma Tzu said there is no birth of the buddha and no death of the buddha. Then what is the buddha?"
The buddha is equivalent to awakened life.
SEKITO REPLIED, "THERE IS NO BUDDHA NATURE IN YOU."
SHODAI ASKED, "WHAT ABOUT ALL LIVING BEINGS?"
SEKITO REPLIED, "THEY HAVE BUDDHA NATURE."
Sekito was strange in his own way. Ma Tzu had very strange behavior; he went to the extreme. But Sekito was not just a normal enlightened master either; he had his own uniqueness. He said, "All living beings have buddha nature, but Shodai, you don't have it!" This is a very strange statement. Why does this poor Shodai not have the buddha nature? When all living beings, even animals, even trees have buddha nature -- only Shodai has not!
SHODAI ASKED, "WHY DON'T I HAVE IT?"
SEKITO SAID, "BECAUSE YOU DON'T ACCEPT IT."
The only question is of recognition, of accepting, of remembering. Even if you have immense treasures but you are unaware of them, what is the point whether you have them or not?
An ancient story says that one master and his disciple were moving from one village to another village. But they started late because people were trying to persuade them to stay a little longer in their village. Starting late, the master was continuously looking into his bag. That he had never done before. And the disciple was behind -- he was also thinking, "What is the matter? Why does he go on looking into the bag, and then close it?"
And again and again he said, "We should go faster, we have to reach the other village before sunset."
The disciple simply could not believe it, because there had been many nights when they stayed in the wildest parts of the forest where there were all kinds of dangers ... and the master had never bothered. They had slept soundly under the trees, knowing perfectly well there was danger all around. But what had happened today? He wanted to reach to the other village before sunset. There was danger -- what kind of danger?
Then they stopped at a well, and the master had to wash his face and do his evening prayer before the sun set, so he was in a hurry. He gave the bag to the disciple and told him, "Keep it carefully." That too was strange. He had given the bag to him many times, but he had never said, "Keep it carefully." Of course he had always kept it carefully.
So when the master started drawing the water from the well, the disciple looked in the bag. And then he knew what the problem was: he was carrying a golden brick, a complete brick of pure gold. He knew now what the danger was. So while the master was praying -- and he was praying quickly, and fast -- the disciple threw that golden brick at the side of the well into the forest and took a stone of the same weight and put it in the bag.
The master quickly finished his prayer and immediately took the bag ... felt the weight. The sun was setting and it was getting dark. Feeling the weight, and touching the bag, he was perfectly satisfied. They started moving and the master said, "We have to run. We have to reach the village anyway, we cannot stay in the forest in the night. It is dangerous."
After two miles of running, both were tired, huffing, puffing .... Finally, the master said, "It seems we are on the wrong track because there seems to be no village ahead. Far away we can see -- not even a single light. And the danger is there ..."
The disciple said, "Don't be worried, I have thrown the danger near that well."
He said, "What!!" He looked, he took out the stone, and he said, "You threw that brick gold of? I told you to keep it carefully!"
And the disciple said, "I have kept it carefully! For two miles you have also been keeping the stone carefully. Not knowing that it was a stone, you were worried. Now can we stay overnight?"
He said, "Now there is no problem! You really threw away the whole danger."
They slept very well in the night ....
If you don't know, you can carry a stone as if it is gold. And you can carry gold as if it is nothing if you don't know.
You are carrying a tremendous treasure within you -- the buddhahood, the enlightenment. But unless you realize it, whether it is there or not does not matter. It is the same.
That's why Sekito said, "You don't have it. All other living beings may have it, but you don't have it. That much is certain. All living beings are not here, so I don't know, but about you I know -- you don't have it."
He said, "But why? Why make me an exception then? Every living being has it ...!"
He said, "BECAUSE YOU DON'T ACCEPT IT. You don't explore it, you don't recognize it. You don't remember a forgotten language."
AT THIS, SHODAI DECIDED TO STAY with Sekito.
Ma Tzu was right. This was the right man for him.
First he must have felt a little disappointed in Ma Tzu, a little humiliated that he had been sent back. But now he recognized: "Ma Tzu was right. Sekito has the secret in his hands, and he is my master. Ma Tzu has a different discipline and he will have to begin from ABC, and Sekito has been working for years over me."
So now everything was clear why he had been sent back. "Go to the same master who has been working on you, and he has been working perfectly rightly. His method is his; my method is different."
But methods don't matter, they are pure devices to bring you a certain awareness, a certain realization, a certain deepening of your consciousness. This statement: "Because you don't accept it, you don't have it. Just realize it and you have it -- you have already had it for centuries, but you have never looked at it." At this, there must have been a lightning flash in Shodai's mind, in his consciousness. He decided to stay with Sekito.
LATER, HE LIVED IN THE SHODAI-JI TEMPLE -- he created a temple, and he lived in the temple, which used to be called Shodai-ji temple -- AND DID NOT GO OUTDOORS FOR THIRTY YEARS.
This is simply symbolic and factual, both. He did not go outside the temple for thirty years. After this statement of Sekito -- "You have it, but because you don't accept it you don't have it" -- for thirty years he did not go outside the temple. Nor did he go out of himself for thirty years, he went on in and in and in. Those thirty years he was not even counting. The only thing that mattered was that he had to remember the hidden secret of buddhahood. He had to give birth to his own buddhahood -- and he had gone to Ma Tzu for the birth of Buddha's celebration.
How can you celebrate Gautam Buddha's birth if your buddha is still unborn? You can't understand what Buddha means, you can't understand what this festival is for, because you have not come to your own festival.
First you have to celebrate yourself.
Only then can you celebrate all the buddhas, awakened or asleep, can you celebrate the whole existence. ... AND DID NOT GO OUTDOORS FOR THIRTY YEARS -- neither out of the hut nor out of himself. He went on in and in -- went on digging.
WHENEVER A SEEKER CAME TO HIM, seeing the temple, and knowing that Shodai was inside meditating for thirty years ... People used to bring some rice, some food, some water, inside the temple. But he never asked anybody and he never went out.
In the East that has been a very virtuous act if somebody is meditating so deeply that he has no time for food, no time to beg, no time to go out. People have a tremendous reverence for meditators. They may have been poor and they may have cut their own food into two pieces -- one they would eat, the other piece they would go and offer to Shodai.
In the East, meditation has not been thought of as a personal matter. It is not that you are doing something selfish for your own self; it is something that you are doing for the whole existence. If you become blossomed, you will be a proof to everybody that they can also blossom. You will become an argument for the inner world. You will become an incentive for others also to explore -- it is possible; it is not impossible. It is not only that Gautam Buddha can become enlightened, Shodai also can. He has been refused by Sekito -- "You don't have it!" This hit him hard.
But this was the device of Sekito. He needed that much of a hit. So he retired into a temple, meditated for thirty years, became enlightened. But whenever anybody would come to him, he would say, "Go away -- you don't have a buddha nature."
The same device that had been used on him by his master, he went on using his whole life. And he helped many people, because the moment he would say, "You don't have buddha nature," immediately they would ask, "What about other living beings?" And he would say, "Of course, they have it."
Naturally, the same dialogue happened again and again, and the person would say, "You are being absurd. If everybody has it, why have I not?" And he would say, "Because you don't accept." Just remember -- it is a forgotten nature. Just go in.
Shodai was not very inventive -- that's what I call a "normal" Zen master. He simply had one small statement. Even that small statement helped many, but could not help a really great number of people, because those people who were coming to him were not in the same state in which he was when he asked Sekito. He had been meditating with Sekito for years. He was just on the verge ... the last hit ....
But the people who were coming were absolutely beginners, so with many nothing transpired. Once in a while, if a man had come from some other master ... perhaps the master was dead, or perhaps he had become tired -- how long had he to wait? And he became anxious: "My master is becoming old and I am not yet enlightened ..." People like these who had been meditating and were just on the verge -- this man Shodai succeeded by hitting them. He knew only one hit -- a poor Zen master.
There are poor Zen masters and rich Zen masters and super-rich Zen masters. You are caught up with a super Zen master! I hit you without hitting you. I hit you in so many ways, from every direction possible, and my hits are not cruel and primitive. They are very contemporary -- in fact very few contemporary people are going to understand me. Perhaps a century or two centuries afterwards, my hits will shake people into awakening. But right now you are caught up, and you cannot go anywhere because you will not find me anywhere around the world. You will find just poor masters. Those super-rich masters have disappeared from the world.
We are living in a poorer world spiritually than before. Materially we are living in a richer world, but spiritually it is a very poor world. When Ma Tzu was there and Sekito was there and Rinzai was there and Nangaku was there, Yakusan was there ... there were so many masters just in Japan -- or in China ...! When Gautam Buddha was here in India there were eight masters just in the small province of Bihar, and they transpired hundreds of people into enlightenment.
But you are blessed. You have found a super-rich Zen master. Don't miss this opportunity, because the world has been becoming thinner and thinner as far as spirituality is concerned.
You have to create a great rebellion around the earth.
You have to upset all the organized religions.
Only then will people be liberated from their mind programs. And to liberate anybody from his mental programming, conditioning, is one of the greatest virtues. You are helping that man towards freedom. But you can help only if you are free. If you are not free, there is no possibility to help. A blind man cannot help another blind man. First you have to open your eyes and recognize your buddhahood, and then it is very easy to trigger the same experience in others.
There are many who are ready, on the verge, but there is nobody to push them. Everybody needs a push, and everybody needs a certain proof that buddhahood is a reality.
You will be surprised to know that when the Christian missionaries first came to India -- and they were the first to translate the Buddhist scriptures into English -- they did not think that a man like Buddha had ever been there. It seemed to them almost an impossibility; they had never heard about enlightenment. They had heard about prophets coming from God, they had heard about messiahs, messengers, they had heard about the only begotten son Jesus. They believed in them, but they had never heard about enlightenment.
Was Moses enlightened? Was Jesus enlightened? They had no answer. They had never heard about the phenomenon at all. So Buddha was a strange phenomenon. The early missionaries simply canceled the idea that he was a historical person. It took almost one hundred years of research for Christian missionaries to accept that Buddha was a real human being, not a fiction. This shows that they had been believing in fictions!
So they thought, deep down ... nobody can believe in Jesus and his miracles. Howsoever great an effort you make to believe, the doubt will remain underneath and will surface whenever your belief will be shaken by something -- and it will be shaken by anything, because a belief has no evidence, no proof.
Every Christian, every Jew, every Mohammedan, every Hindu, is living under such beliefs which they themselves know cannot be true. But out of fear they are accepting it.
But fear cannot transform you. There is only one way to be transformed, and that is to find your buddhahood. That will give you the proof that other buddhas have actually happened.
If you can become a buddha, you are the argument, you are the proof. And unless you know buddhahood you cannot come to a trust that such a miracle is possible. And it is the greatest miracle. Walking on water is just stupid; it is not a miracle.
It happened once ....
A man came to Ramakrishna and he had trained himself in a certain yoga method. There are yoga methods by which you can throw all the air out of the body so you become a vacuum inside. You cannot remain in that vacuum for more than ten minutes, but ten minutes is enough to show that you can walk on water. If you are a vacuum you can walk on the water.
But it takes almost eighteen to twenty years to learn that method of creating the vacuum. Once you have created the vacuum ... I have seen one man only. If you can create a vacuum you can do strange things. I have seen this man in my childhood, and my memory is absolutely clean about that man. I can see him still, because he was doing such a strange thing. From his prick he would drink water! And that is possible only if you can create a vacuum inside. Then the vacuum pulls the water, pumps the water in. But I have come across only one man. I have tried hard again to find somebody ...
I asked him, "How long did it take for you?"
He said, "It is a very difficult job. It took at least twenty years for me to create the vacuum. And only for ten minutes ...!"
A man came to Ramakrishna and he said, "I have heard much about you, but can you walk on water?"
Ramakrishna said, "That's nothing. You can?"
He said, "Of course."
Ramakrishna said, "I prefer riding on a cloud. Do you know the art?"
He said, "No, I have never heard."
Ramakrishna said, "How long did it take for you to learn the knack?"
The man said, "Eighteen years continuously I have been ..."
Ramakrishna said, "You are an idiot. Because when I want to go on the Ganges" -- and they both were sitting by the side of the Ganges under a beautiful tree where Ramakrishna used to sit and just watch the Ganges flowing. It is a beautiful place where Ramakrishna lived -- outside Calcutta, a very silent, peaceful place. Just one temple existed at that time in which he lived, just on the bank of Ganges.
So Ramakrishna said, "Whenever I want to go there, you see that ferryboat? -- it takes only two paisa. And that too, that boatman does not take from me. He says, `Not from you ... I earn enough, I can take you without it.' So when I can go to the other side without even giving two paisa, why should I waste eighteen years of my life in learning to walk on the water? And do you think it is something of spirituality? All the fishes are doing that, and there are so many water animals ... so what is the point? How do you think it is connected with your spiritual growth? You wasted your eighteen years in sheer stupidity. And I don't ride on the clouds either. I was just trying to show you that even riding on the clouds will not be of any value."
The real value is: are you acquainted with your buddha?
It is the only thing that matters.
When Christians, the missionaries, came to know about Buddha and his scriptures they were very much amazed, because these sutras of Buddha have such beauty that the Bible simply fades away, looks very childish.
One great missionary in Japan had gone to see a Zen master, and he believed he could convert him. His idea was that if he could convert this Zen master, to whom even the emperor of Japan comes -- and he had large following -- just converting this one man, he could convert the whole of Japan. The emperor would be converted, thousands of his disciples would be converted. So rather than working on ordinary people, it was better to work on this man. And certainly there are beautiful statements in the Bible, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, so he took the Bible.
He was greeted by the Zen master, and he said, "I have brought you my holy scripture. I would like to read it to you and I would like to know your opinion."
So he started reading the Sermon on the Mount. He had gone two or three lines when the Zen master said, "Stop. Whoever wrote it, in his next life he may become enlightened."
He did not even listen to the whole sermon. He said, "Just stop. Whoever wrote it, in his next life will become enlightened. But right now these sutras are coming from an unenlightened person."
Shocked, the missionary could not understand -- "Jesus Christ is unenlightened?"
But the idea of enlightenment has never happened in the West. The very idea is missing. So it was very difficult for them to understand that there have been a totally different kind of people. They have always believed in God, his son, which is not possible without God. His prophets which come from the God, his messengers, they come from the God -- everything comes from God. That hypothesis is fundamental. If you deny that, then the whole of Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, all three religions flop down. They simply disappear with one hypothesis which is absolutely unproved.
Here they came to understand a totally different process. A buddha does not come from above, he comes from below and he rises upwards. You see the difference: he becomes godly as he goes on upwards. And all the Christian or Jewish or Mohammedan prophets and messiahs come from up to down.
Buddha is an evolution. It is an intrinsic potentiality that starts going upwards like a tree, and when the spring comes it blossoms. They have never thought that man becomes godly; they have always thought only God can come down. Hindus believe in incarnation -- God comes as Krishna, God comes as Rama ...
And it is absolutely clear that God has been coming so many times -- and the world is such a mess! What has God done to the world? God comes in Krishna as a perfect incarnation -- and what has that perfect incarnation done? Nobody asks the question: Why has he come in the first place? And if he has come then what has he done?
Krishna has promised, and Hindus are still believing that he will be coming. His promise is: "When there will be danger, when humanity will be in pain and anguish and anxiety, when there will be atheism spreading in the world, when saints will be tortured ... whenever there will be such a crisis in religion, I will come." But I have been asking so-called Hindu saints, "The last time he came, what did he do? And why are you waiting for him? The last time he proved nothing. Even if he comes he is not going to do anything. And how many times has he come?"
Hindus believe that he has already come twenty-three times; the twenty-fourth time he has to come. But twenty-three times he has been a failure. That is enough proof: the twenty-fourth time he is not going to be a success.
And what have the prophets of the Jews done? And what have the prophets like Jesus or Mohammed done to Christianity or to Mohammedanism? They have created an ugly human psychology, neurotic. They have not been helping the evolution of consciousness.
So Buddha is completely a different category. He is not coming from any hypothesis downwards. He is not special. He is just an ordinary human being like you and me, but he starts growing his potentiality upwards. He touches the very stars, he grows roots into the earth, goes to the deepest possibility. He stands vertical, leaves the horizontal plane of consciousness which belongs to the animals. He is really a rebel, an authentic rebel.
Naturally, every word that has come from him has tremendous meaning, because he is not accepting any lies, any consolations. And he is not giving any lies to people or any consolations. He is simply saying what his experience is, and that it can be your experience also.
Buddha created a totally different world, and following him, masters upon masters ... but certainly they remain a very thin stream. Buddha belongs to the very intelligent people. It is not for the mediocre, it is not for the retarded, it is not for the masses.
But if the intelligent people of the world rise into buddhahood, they will help the whole of humanity at least to see what is possible for a human being, what is hidden in us. And if thousands of people can bring it to blossoming, why cannot we?
Every buddha becomes a proof, an argument to the whole of humanity. He raises the level of existence spiritually, and each buddha goes on raising the level of humanity without your knowing. You are more close now after twenty-five centuries than you were when Buddha was alive.
Most of you must have been around him. Most of you must have been around other buddhas, because you are not new to the world. You have been here always, but you never managed up to now to go as intensely as possible. Hence my insistence: Don't miss this opportunity.
You have to decide -- you have to be very decisive: "I have to bring my potential to its ultimate flowering. I have to become a celebration, a festival. I have to contribute to the beauty and truth and the divineness of existence."
Basho wrote:
EARLY SPRING
A NAMELESS HILL KNEE DEEP
IN THE GAUZE OF MORNING STILLNESS.
These are all statements of meditators, and Basho is a great master and simultaneously one of the greatest haiku poets.
"Early spring" -- just visualize. "Early spring" -- it has just come fresh. The trees have been waiting for it, the earth has been waiting for it. Those who have some aesthetic sense -- the painters, the poets, the musicians, the dancers, the sculptors -- they have been waiting for it. It has come. Early spring -- such a joy comes following with it, such freshness all around. Such fragrance of flowers.
"A nameless hill knee deep in the gauze of morning stillness." Even the hill is feeling the spring breeze, "knee deep in the gauze of morning stillness." Not only am I kneeling down in my gratitude for existence, for this fresh spring, but once more, the mountain is also knee deep -- is as grateful as I am.
EARLY SPRING
A NAMELESS HILL KNEE DEEP
IN THE GAUZE OF MORNING STILLNESS.
Those small hours before the sunrise, when the night is just going and the sun has not arrived on the horizon, are the most peaceful. And meditators have found that that is the best time to meditate -- particularly in the East, when those moments are the coolest in the day.
Perhaps it may not be true about the West; it may be too cold. Perhaps for the West the best time will be midnight. It is good for the East also, but the early morning when just the flowers are opening to welcome the sun, and the birds are fluttering their wings getting ready to sing their songs and dance into the air ...
And that stillness ... Night is gone, almost gone, and the morning is not born yet. That in-between moment has been given a special name in the East, sandhya. Sandhya means the interval between day and night. So it comes two times -- in the morning and in the evening, when the sun has set and the night has not come. So these two times are called sandhya, intervals.
In these intervals you can meditate more deeply than at any other time. It is just an existential experience of thousands of meditators.
Next: Chapter 6: Come to your own festival, Question 2
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