| 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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YAKUSAN: STRAIGHT TO THE POINT OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Chapter 4: The sutra is long, the night is short
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Yakusan
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
WHEN THE NOVICE MONK, GAO, FIRST CALLED ON YAKUSAN, YAKUSAN ASKED HIM, "WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?"
GAO SAID, "FROM NANYUE."
YAKUSAN ASKED, "WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"
GAO REPLIED, "TO JIANGLING TO RECEIVE THE PRECEPTS."
YAKUSAN THEN ASKED, "WHAT IS THE AIM OF RECEIVING PRECEPTS?"
GAO ANSWERED, "TO ESCAPE BIRTH AND DEATH."
YAKUSAN SAID, "THERE IS SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T RECEIVE THE PRECEPTS AND HAS NO BIRTH AND DEATH TO ESCAPE -- DO YOU KNOW?" GAO ASKED, "THEN WHAT IS THE USE OF THE BUDDHA'S PRECEPTS?" YAKUSAN SAID, "THIS NOVICE STILL HAS LIPS AND TEETH."
AT THIS, THE NOVICE BOWED AND WITHDREW.
DOGO THEN CAME FORWARD AND STOOD BY YAKUSAN, WHO SAID TO HIM, "THAT LIMPING NOVICE WHO JUST CAME, AFTER ALL HAS SOME LIFE IN HIM." DOGO SAID, "HE'S NOT TO BE ENTIRELY BELIEVED YET -- YOU SHOULD TEST HIM AGAIN FIRST." WHEN EVENING CAME, YAKUSAN WENT UP INTO THE HALL; HE CALLED, "WHERE IS THE NOVICE WHO CAME EARLIER?" GAO THEN CAME FORWARD FROM THE ASSEMBLY AND STOOD THERE, AND YAKUSAN SAID TO HIM, "I HEAR THAT CHANGAN IS VERY NOISY."
GAO SAID, "MY PROVINCE IS PEACEFUL." YAKUSAN ASKED, WITH MUCH JOY, "DID YOU REALIZE THIS FROM READING SCRIPTURES OR FROM MAKING INQUIRIES?", TO WHICH GAO REPLIED, "I DID NOT GET IT FROM READING SCRIPTURES OR FROM MAKING INQUIRIES."
YAKUSAN SAID, "MANY PEOPLE DO NOT READ SCRIPTURES OR MAKE INQUIRIES -- WHY DON'T THEY GET IT?"
GAO SAID, "I DON'T SAY THEY DON'T GET IT -- IT IS JUST THAT THEY DON'T AGREE TO TAKE IT UP."
Friends, one sannyasin has asked: he has been to the Dalai Lama, he has been to many Zen masters in Japan, but when he comes here he feels perfectly at home. Why?
Thinking about his problem, I remembered ....
A man went to the psychiatrist and said, "I am feeling so happy. Why?"
The psychiatrist was at a loss. He had seen miserable people, sick people, and he could answer the `why' -- why they are miserable, why they are in despair, why they are sad -- but how to answer a man who asks, "I am feeling very happy. Why?"
Happiness has no cause. It simply arises in your being without any cause. If you feel at home here, this is your home. From where comes the question, "Why?"
But I can understand what you wanted to ask but could not phrase it rightly. You have been to the Dalai Lama .... The Dalai Lama is not enlightened. He still has the great desire to be the political head of Tibet. That desire is preventing his enlightenment. I feel sorry for him -- a nice man -- but any desire is going to become a tremendous obstacle.
I had sent him the message that, "It is time you dropped the very idea of being the political head of Tibet."* He is in tremendous anguish. In this state he cannot become enlightened. If he drops the desire, the longing to be the political head of a country, perhaps as the desire disappears like smoke, he may see the light for the first time. He has not seen it yet.
And moreover, even if he becomes enlightened, his language, his way of answering you will be out of date. He is too learned in the Buddhist scriptures: he will repeat those scriptures, and they are very ancient, they are no longer contemporary.
The same is the situation in Japan. You have been hearing me speak on Zen masters; that creates a great desire in you to go to Japan. But don't go to Japan, you will be frustrated.
While I am speaking on Zen masters, I am speaking in a way which is absolutely contemporary; you can understand it. They are still speaking the language of the past.
It is a calamity that the so-called religious people get caught up in a certain moment in history. Then they don't progress from that place. The Buddhists are caught up with Gautam Buddha, twenty-five centuries back. Everything has changed, but their ideology remains twenty-five centuries old. It does not ring bells in your heart, hence you cannot feel at home.
Never think for a moment that what I am saying about Zen has been said by the Zen masters themselves. I am constantly improving, improvising. With me religion is not something static. It is an evolutionary process. It grows like a tree, hundreds of feet high, it moves like a river, thousands of miles; not for a single moment does the movement stop. Since eternity rivers have been moving and moving and moving.
I am not a pond; and when you go to Japan you will find ponds. I make every effort to make the ponds flow like a river. A pond knows nothing but death; it is dying every moment, the water is evaporating. Soon there will be just mud left.
A river is always alive, singing and dancing, and moving into the unknown territories without any map, without any guidance, without a guide -- just trusting in existence. It knows that the ocean has to be somewhere. "If the thirst for the ocean is in me, that is enough proof, enough evidence that somewhere the ocean is waiting for me. He has called me, otherwise why this thirst, why this longing to meet with the unlimited?" Your thirst is a proof, an argument, a valid evidence.
With me, nothing is static. That creates a puzzle in many static minds, because whatever I have said yesterday was yesterday. Today I am absolutely fresh and new. Even I don't know what I am going to say to you. When you hear it, I will also hear it.
You get puzzled, confused: "The other day you were saying this, and today you have changed completely." I go on improving on devices, I go on improving on parables, on stories, so you will find the same story told in different ways in my literature. Sometimes I take a different standpoint, sometimes I look at it from a different angle. Sometimes I drop something out of it -- it does not fit the moment. Sometimes I add something which I have never said before. And it is easy for me because I don't remember what I have said before; otherwise it would be difficult, even for me! But it is not. The past is past, that which is gone is gone.
I am just here to respond to your thirst.
I don't care whether it is consistent with my past statements. I am still alive. Only dead people are consistent because they cannot change anything, they are in their graves.
If a person remains consistent while living, that means at some moment of time he died. He is living a posthumous life, a ghost life. He is no more a reality; reality has stopped at a certain point.
Hippies used to say, "Don't believe anyone who is more than thirty years old." I can see a certain truth in it. As a person becomes more experienced in the world, he becomes more and more cunning.
The world is cunning. You have to face a cunning world, and the only way is to be more cunning than the others. You have to compete with all kinds of ugly people. You have to be hard, you cannot remain nice, compassionate. As one becomes more and more experienced in the world, he is more and more corrupted, he loses his innocence; he has died.
Most people die at the age of thirty, and hippies themselves have given the proof; they have all died.
What happened to the hippies? They simply disappeared. By the time they had looked around the world, they saw that everybody is competitive; in this competitive world you cannot survive. Now all the hippies are good managers in great corporations. They are now called with a new name: Yuppies.
I have been searching for a hippy; there are no hippies anymore. It is not that they have all died; they have all shaved their beards, dropped their ideology of being dirty, they have started taking showers. They have got married, they have forgotten all about great love affairs under the moon.
Now they have their own houses, a small garden, a beautiful car, a wife, two or three children, a good job. Now they cannot afford the old lifestyle of being a hippy; they will be thrown out of the office. Now they use ties, shoes. They have mixed with the rotten society that they had condemned before. But in a way, their old statement was right: Don't believe a man who is over thirty.
It is very rare to find a man who remains his whole life like a child, utterly innocent and uncorrupted by the world.
When you come here, when you face me, you are facing a man who belongs to eternity, not to time. And eternity is your home, your eternal home. With me you will learn how to go on growing, how to go on flowing, how to go on with existence without bothering with your mind and its consistencies, without bothering that "This is contradictory to what you said yesterday!" It has to be. If you are a living being, your today is going to contradict all your yesterdays. That means you are fully alive, nothing has gone dead in you.
People die partially; slowly slowly nothing of life remains in them. Then they become absolutely consistent. But don't listen to a man who is consistent. He is dead. Beware of it.
Your feeling at home here simply means you have entered into the river which goes on flowing. It is always fresh, it never becomes dirty. It is always singing songs, and its waves go on dancing in the sun, in the moon. But it is always on the go.
It was customary with Gautam Buddha that whenever somebody became enlightened, he was sent away to share his experience with those who were stumbling on the path. Obviously, those disciples who had become enlightened would ask him for his last message so that they can carry it in their heart.
You will be surprised what his last message was to every disciple who was departing. He would call the disciple close, so nobody else could hear -- because it was the same message for every one. In the ear of the disciple he would say, "Always remember: charaiveti, charaiveti, go on, go on, never stop. Existence never stops; why should you stop? charaiveti, charaiveti."
Because it was always said into the ear of the disciple in secrecy, everybody wondered what the last message was. But you could get it only when you became enlightened.
I give it to you even without enlightenment. Buddha was very miserly. Why wait for your enlightenment? Why not tell you the truth right now? charaiveti, charaiveti -- go on, flowing, flexible, at rest with existence.
You have been to the Dalai Lama, you may have been to other masters. They are great teachers, they are not masters. That's why you have not felt at home. Teachers don't have the charisma, the magnetic force, the buddhafield around them. They have only mere words, unlived, unexperienced. They have great scriptures with them, they are argumentative, they can convince you about a certain philosophy.
I don't have any philosophy because existence has no philosophy at all. It has flowers, it has stars, it has rivers, it has oceans, mountains. But I have never come across existence having any philosophy, any religion, any dogma, any theology, any creed, any cult. It is absolutely open and free.
Every philosophy becomes an imprisonment. Every religion chains you, handcuffs you. Every cult and creed is poisonous.
You must have come across the teachers. They are repulsive. They try in every way to attract you, and maybe for a small time you may be attracted by their great learning, but soon you will discover that learning is only paper-thick. Inside, the man is as ignorant, perhaps more ignorant, than you are. Soon you will have to desert him.
Here we don't have any philosophy.
Life is our philosophy.
Existence is our philosophy.
To be in tune with the world, to be in harmony with the cosmos, is our religion. And the whole existence is continuously flowing: charaiveti charaiveti. It goes on and on. There is no end and there is no beginning.
Unless you find such a master, multidimensional, without beginning, without end, you will not feel at home. You will feel in a prison. Only the vast sky of a master can allow you to feel at home, because the basic necessity of every consciousness is freedom.
I teach you freedom. I share with you my freedom, my love, but without any conditions attached to it.
I am just a well, overflowing. If you are thirsty you can drink. You need not even thank me. You don't owe anything to me, not even gratitude. I am already overflowing, whether anybody drinks of me or not.
Even if you all disappear from the Gautama the Buddha Auditorium, I will come every evening at exactly seven o'clock, and I will talk to my absent disciples.
Just the other day I told Nirvano -- because sometimes she comes late by two minutes, just the way of a lady, never in time; I told her, "This won't do. I have to be in my chair on time. Whether anybody is there or not does not matter. I will speak to the trees, to the bamboos -- they are such great listeners, they never interrupt."
These people -- the Dalai Lama and others -- are fossils, they have died long ago.
When I give my interpretation, remember always it is my interpretation. If I meet the master who has written the sutras, I know perfectly well that there is no possibility of agreement. But because they are all dead I am completely free to interpret them according to the times, not according to their creed.
Their background was their background; today that background does not exist, that world is no longer there. Man's concerns have changed, man's conditionings have changed. Man is programmed in different ways. I have to deprogram the people whom I am facing.
I am exactly in the moment, that's why you feel at home. But rejoice, rather than being worried: "Why am I feeling at home? Why am I happy?" Just be happy! Happiness needs no cause. Only misery can be diagnosed, not happiness.
Go to any doctor and ask him, "I am feeling happy. Diagnose it." As far as I know, up to now nobody has been able to diagnose happiness. Yes, diseases can be diagnosed and cured, but happiness cannot be diagnosed, and neither can it be cured. Once you have caught fire, nobody can put it out.
So it is perfectly okay. But I know the problem is that your whole life you have never been okay, something was always wrong. Somebody was always pointing out that you are doing wrong, you are behaving wrongly, that this is not the right etiquette. Some Confucius, some Manu, some Moses, some Mohammed was telling you how to behave. Somebody was deciding for you what is right and what is wrong.
This is the only place, for the first time in the whole of history, where nobody is deciding for you what is right and what is wrong. My effort is to bring your consciousness to the highest peak, so that it can decide on its own what is right and what is wrong.
It may not be in agreement with Manu, five thousand years old, it may not be in agreement with Moses, it may not be in agreement with Mohammed. It will be only in agreement with existence and with you.
To me, religion is an individual love affair with existence. It has nothing to do with scriptures, nothing to do with knowledge, learning -- that is all nonsense.
But because you have become accustomed to being told that you are unworthy, undeserving and you have accepted it, when you come here to a total freedom, with no inhibitions, with no repressions, with nobody to tell you what to do and what not to do, you feel at a loss. It is just like a small child in a fair who loses his mother's hand and feels at a loss where to go.
You remain retarded because of these people who go on telling you what is right and what is wrong. They keep you in dependence, in slavery. And I have told you, the greatest slavery is spiritual slavery, and the whole of humanity is living under spiritual slavery.
I teach you rebellion!
Come out of the masses. Stand alone like a lion and live your life according to your own light. Find the light and it will show you the path. The path that is shown by your own light is the only path that is right. What others have been telling may be right for them; it cannot be right for you.
That's why I am not a moralist, I am not an immoralist. I am absolutely amoral. I don't consider morality or immorality at all. I am not a puritan who creates guilt in you.
Just the other day I was telling you about the German scholar who has compared me with Jesus. He has a point. He seems to be a man of very keen intelligence. He says that I am far superior to Jesus, but I will not be able to found a religion. He is right! Why does he say that? He says, "Because you go on teaching freedom, how can you found a religion?"
A religion is founded by slaves, and to create slavery there is a psychological device.
First, create guilt. Once a person starts feeling guilty that he is doing something wrong, that he is undeserving, unworthy, then he has a wound inside which will not heal, which will go on growing. He has a spiritual cancer in the name of guilt. But all the religions have been creating that spiritual cancer.
Their purpose is that when you feel guilty, undeserving, you lose your confidence and you have to go to the priest to find confidence. You have to confess to the priest that you have been doing something wrong, that you have been having a love affair with somebody else's wife. Now you feel guilty. You cannot say it to your wife, you cannot say it to the husband of the woman you are in love with. Where to go? It becomes a constant tension in you. You are hiding like a thief from everybody.
The priest is available. You can go and confess to the priest that this is happening. He is perfectly happy. He says, "You are forgiven. I will pray for you to God. Now put ten dollars into the donation box, say five Hail Marys, and you are free of sin."
Great! First they create the guilt, then they make the arrangement for removing the guilt. And it is worth ten dollars. Now you have found a way: you can have as many love affairs with anybody's wife, and no worry. Just ten dollars.
This is a very subtle exploitation of man.
I have told you .... In a small school, the teacher was talking about Jesus as the greatest man in history. For half an hour or more she talked about Jesus, around and around, not exactly making the pronouncement that he was the greatest man in history, but all her arguments pointed to that statement.
Then finally she asked a small boy -- he was American -- to stand up. "Who is it?"
He said, "Abraham Lincoln."
She was shocked. She said, "It is good, but not perfect. Sit down."
She asked another boy. He said, "Winston Churchill."
She said, "Not bad, but not right either. Just sit down." And that way she went around the class.
It was an international school, so everybody was talking -- somebody about Lenin, somebody about Mao Zedong, somebody about Mahatma Gandhi.
She was puzzled. She had been talking about Jesus and nobody was answering, "Jesus." Then finally she came to a small boy, Jewish. She was worried that he would say Moses.
But you know Jews ....
The little boy stood up and said, "Jesus Christ."
She said, "Absolutely perfect!" But she was puzzled a little; this boy was a Jew. So after the class she took him aside and asked him, "Are you not a Jew?"
He said, "Yes, I am a Jew."
"Then why did you say that Jesus Christ was the greatest man in history?"
He said, "In my heart of hearts I know Moses was the greatest man in history, but business is business!"
All the religions, all the societies, are corrupting people. So when you come here and find no corruption, no morality, no puritanism, and find absolute acceptance as you are, nobody interfering in your lifestyle, you feel good, but a little confused. You are coming from a world which has been guiding you on every step.
Do you know, Gautam Buddha's scriptures have thirty-three thousand principles for the Buddhist monk. Even to remember them is impossible. Thirty-three thousand principles, for every detail of life! The smallest detail of life is determined. You have to follow it, otherwise you are guilty.
You can have only three pieces of clothing. It may be a very cold winter and you may need something warmer, but that is not in accordance with the principles, because all woolen things come from the hair of animals.
While taking that hair from the animals you are hurting those animals, and you are leaving them without fur in winter. Only in winter does that hair grow to protect them from the cold. All the year round they don't care about their fur, but just as winter starts coming closer, the fur becomes thicker. It is a natural protection for the poor animals, and you are cutting their fur exactly in the middle of the winter when it is the biggest and the best. You are leaving them without fur in the cold winter of the mountains, in the Himalayas, where snow is falling.
Buddha prohibited it: you should not use any woolen clothes.
Now, minute details: you cannot have two baths every day, that is luxurious. You should not eat in the night, and you should not drink in the night. At night all animals sleep, all trees sleep, you should sleep. Only between sunrise and sunset can you eat -- and only one time.
The smallest details .... You should not wear shoes because in those days they were made only of animals' skins. It was violent. In the hot summer, the followers of Buddha would be walking with naked feet on the burning earth. They could not have even an umbrella. In the rains they were soaking wet, and even in the hot summer they could not have an umbrella, because that is a luxury.
And it is not that Buddha was the most ascetic; according to Mahavira, Buddha was living in luxury because he had three pieces of clothing. Mahavira lived naked, this is real asceticism. Buddha was a luxurious fellow, having three pieces of cloth. It is all relative, what is luxurious and what is not.
You think having two meals a day is luxurious? Not for the Americans, who are having at least five meals per day -- and tea break and coffee break and ice-cream break and Coca-Cola break. The American is doing only one thing: watching the television and swallowing all kinds of junk, getting fatter and fatter and fatter. And the ultimate result? He is taken to the hospital.
Three million people are in hospitals just because they are too fat and it is dangerous to their hearts. They are suffering very much because they want to go home, they are missing the fridge!
Only the American misses the fridge. Other people miss other things: the wife, the children, the house, the garden; the American misses the fridge. Even in the night he will get up one or two times; that is normal. I am not talking about abnormal people -- almost asleep they will move directly to the fridge.
A man was complaining to his psychoanalyst, that his wife was becoming fatter and fatter and fatter.
"Now she simply sits and watches television and goes on eating. It is disgusting to see her. I remain late in the office unnecessarily, I go to the pub unnecessarily, just not to see the face of that woman. Late in the night, completely drunk, I return. You have to do something!"
The analyst said, "You do one thing. Take this beautiful picture of a naked woman" -- absolutely proportionate, could have won the world beauty contest. "Take this and paste it inside the fridge. Whenever your wife opens the fridge, she will see the beautiful woman and she will see herself -- just a bag, no curves, no slopes, no high peak points, nothing. She will become jealous of this picture, and she will start dieting."
The man said, "Perfectly right. It seems logical."
On the way home he looked at the picture. He said, "My God! What a woman!" He went and pasted the picture in the fridge.
After six months the psychoanalyst met him on the sea beach. He could not believe it; it was as if somebody had puffed air into him. He had become a balloon!
The psychoanalyst asked, "What happened?"
He said, "Everything backfired. My wife does not care a bit about that bitch you have given me but I fell in love with the picture; so whenever I have any time I immediately run to the fridge to see the picture. But when you see the picture you also see the ice-cream .... So, because of that picture, this is my situation. You ditched me, you are responsible. And my wife is still the same."
The psychoanalyst said, "I had never thought that this would happen. Now it is beyond psychiatry, you need to get hospitalized."
He said, "I cannot. I cannot lose my fridge and my beloved's photograph." She had become his beloved.
According to Buddha these people will be thought monsters. But in America it is average: seven and a half hours of television is average. And what will you do sitting in the chair? The mouth also needs to move -- a little exercise ... not to get too disturbed -- because if you go to the fridge you will miss something on the television.
And it is all rubbish! Fifty percent is advertisement; the other fifty percent is just to allure you, to keep you watching to see the advertisement. And what is being advertised? They are advertising more food, better ice-cream!
The whole country is getting insane. Food seems to be God. In fact, in the Hindu scriptures food is called God. But it was because people were so poor, starving, that food was God; not the American style. America has made food God: eat, drink, be merry -- for the first time the whole country is living a hedonistic life. Buddha would have condemned it totally.
Who is right? If this is the only life and there is no life after death, then perhaps the American is right and Buddha is wrong. If this is the only life, then why not eat, drink, be merry? There is nothing else ....
But Buddha is not wrong. There have been lives before and there are going to be lives afterwards. Even now a new branch of psychology, parapsychology, is investigating all over the world in many universities, and finding valid evidence of past lives and possibilities of future lives. If there have been past lives, that makes it certain that you will have future lives.
Under hypnosis people are remembering many lives in the past. And it is not imagination, because you can hypnotize them a second time and they will remember the same thing. It is not dreaming. You cannot repeat a dream, it is not under your will. And if it is only remembering, that is not so great an achievement. The East has always talked about it, has methods how to remember; and not only to remember -- but how to live it again.
Parapsychologists are interested that when a person goes backwards and remembers past lives, many of his sicknesses, psychological tensions, anxieties which he has carried, disappear. They belong to his past lives, and unless you go to the very roots you cannot cut the tree.
Once he remembers from where this anxiety comes, he simply starts laughing. It is an anxiety about a woman he was married to in the past life. She tortured him, and that memory is still carried in his mind.
Because of this memory he cannot look at his own wife; that memory comes between them. He is afraid, he is afraid of women. Once he finds this out, he starts laughing and giggling: "This is nonsense. That was another woman and that is finished." Suddenly all anxiety disappears. For the first time he looks at his wife as she is. That old film of the past life is no longer a hindrance.
Parapsychology is going to be of great importance in future. When psychoanalysis and psychology are dead, parapsychology will be of immense help to humanity.
We are doing everything here in hypnosis to take you backwards in time. If you can go completely into thousands of lives, all your psychological problems will disappear, and meditation will be so simple that you need just close your eyes and you will have reached to the center. We are trying to reach to the center of your very being. This is your home.
Once you have come in contact with me, no teacher, no learned scholar is going to satisfy you. You will not find another man who is not only contemporary to you, but almost one century ahead. I will remain relevant for at least one century.
Now the sutra .... The sutra is long and the night is short. I hope that I will be able to finish it before sunrise!
OUR BELOVED MASTER,
WHEN THE NOVICE MONK, GAO, FIRST CALLED ON YAKUSAN, YAKUSAN ASKED HIM, "WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?"
This question is asked again and again and again:
"WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?"
It does not refer to the place, it refers to the space. It refers to your ultimate home from where you have come.
GAO SAID, "FROM NANYUE,"
-- the name of his village. He could not understand, he was a newcomer. He had no idea why Zen masters ask,
"WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?"
They are asking, "Have you meditated? Have you been to the center of your being? Have you looked beyond the center, to the eternal space from where you are coming?" It is asking in a very roundabout way, "Are you a meditator? Have you found the center of your being, your buddha?"
But they don't ask that way, they ask a simple question. Now the answer of the novice will decide for the master from where to begin.
GAO SAID, "FROM NANYUE."
YAKUSAN ASKED, "WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"
That is another question of the same category. If you know where you are going, you will know simultaneously from where you are coming, because it is the same place -- from where we come and to where we go. It is a complete circle, the same point is reached again, the same eternity, the same cosmos.
A tidal wave arises in the ocean -- from where is it coming? And soon it disperses back in the ocean. The source of your coming and the object of your going are absolutely the same.
Because the first question failed, the newcomer could not understand it,
YAKUSAN ASKED, "WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
If you don't know where you are coming from, at least you must know where you are going."
GAO REPLIED, "TO JIANGLING TO RECEIVE THE PRECEPTS."
Jiangling was a kind of university where great scholars translated Buddhist scriptures from China and India. It was the most famous learned place. So he said, "I am going to Jiangling to receive the precepts, the teachings of the Buddha."
YAKUSAN THEN ASKED, "WHAT IS THE AIM OF RECEIVING PRECEPTS?"
What will you do with the precepts? You can learn all the scriptures, but that will not make you wise. On the contrary, it will make you more egoistic and more ignorant. What are you going to get by receiving precepts?
Zen is not concerned with knowledge at all.
One Zen master burned all the Buddhist scriptures; and he worshipped Buddha, he loved Buddha and he had become enlightened as a heritage of Buddha. But he burned all the scriptures after his enlightenment, because he saw that, "These scriptures have been hindering me for years. I would have become enlightened anytime, but because of these scriptures I was repeating words, cramming theorizations, filling myself with great philosophy, and that was becoming a great China Wall, very difficult to pass beyond."
When he became enlightened under a master, his first thing was to burn all the scriptures. That does not mean he was disrespectful to Buddha, because the next morning he was dancing before the Buddha's statue.
His master said, "But you have burnt the scriptures?"
He said, "Yes, I have burnt the scriptures because I have realized the truth of Buddha. It is not in the scriptures, it is in me. In deep gratitude I am dancing before his statue."
One Zen monk burned Buddha's wooden statue because the night was too cold. The priest came and said, "Are you insane?"
He said, "Maybe, but the night is too cold. You have got two more Buddhas in your temple; I have just taken one. Be compassionate, bring at least one more, because still there is a long night ahead and it is becoming colder."
The priest said, "I thought you were a great master, that is why I allowed you to stay the night in the temple. I had never thought even in my dreams that a great master would do such a thing. You have burnt my most precious Buddha. It was made of sandalwood."
The master took his staff and started searching in the ashes of the burnt Buddha.
The priest said, "What are you doing now?"
He said, "I am looking for his bones."
The priest said, "My God! You are really mad. It is a wooden statue, it does not have any bones!"
He said, "That's what I was saying. It is not Buddha, it is just a wooden replica. You just bring another statue. None of your statues are buddhas, they are just wooden sculptures. Bring it. The night is too cold and a living buddha is ordering you."
The priest thought that this man was going to burn the whole temple. He pushed him out of the door and closed the door. The master said, "Listen, you will repent later on. You are throwing out the living buddha for the wooden statues. But it is okay. See you in the morning." There was no anger, no feeling of humiliation.
In the morning when the priest opened the doors -- he opened them very cautiously, looking to where that madman had been sitting -- he was not there. So he opened the doors, and then he saw him sitting on the other side of the road. There was a milestone, and he had collected a few wildflowers and put them on the milestone, and he was doing his morning worship: Buddham sharanam gachchhami.
The priest said, "What kind of man is he? In the night he burned the buddha, and now before a milestone he is saying, `I come to the feet of the Buddha.'"
The priest went close to him, but he did not look at him. He was in deep meditation, in deep serenity. As the sun was rising, something inside of him was becoming lighter and lighter. When he opened his eyes, the priest looked into his eyes. He had never seen such beauty, such depth. He had never seen such silence, such grace. Perhaps he had done wrong. He touched the feet of the master.
The master said, "I had told you beforehand that you would repent. You are throwing a living buddha out of the temple and preserving the wooden buddhas."
Zen is very straightforward. Neither statues can help, nor scriptures can help. The only thing that can help is going deeper into yourself, realizing the inner sky and the freedom that comes with it, and the fragrance of the beyond.
The master asked,
"WHAT IS THE AIM OF RECEIVING PRECEPTS?
What are you going to do when you become learned? When you have received all the teachings of Buddha, what are you going to do? What is the goal?"
GAO ANSWERED, "TO ESCAPE BIRTH AND DEATH."
He must have heard about it, that these Buddhists are trying to get out of the circle of birth and death. And, obviously, most people live life in such a way that it creates more and more misery.
The whole programming of humanity is for misery, so one starts thinking how to get out of the circle of birth and death. That is not really going to help. You have to learn how to get out of the programming the society has given to you. Once you are out of that programming, you are out of birth and death and the so-called circle.
But feeling miserable, he may have thought, "It is better to get out of birth and death."
YAKUSAN SAID, "THERE IS SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T RECEIVE THE PRECEPTS AND HAS NO BIRTH AND DEATH TO ESCAPE -- DO YOU KNOW?"
He is indicating towards his inner buddha.
"THERE IS SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T RECEIVE THE PRECEPTS AND HAS NO BIRTH AND DEATH TO ESCAPE -- DO YOU KNOW HIM?"
GAO ASKED, "THEN WHAT IS THE USE OF THE BUDDHA'S PRECEPTS?"
He missed the point again. The master was very clear. Rarely are Zen masters so clear, but seeing that the man is a beginner, Yakusan must have been very clear, uncomplicated. He has said it exactly:
"THERE IS SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T RECEIVE THE PRECEPTS AND HAS NO BIRTH AND DEATH TO ESCAPE -- DO YOU KNOW him?"
He is simply asking, "Do you know yourself? Do you know someone inside you who needs no knowledge, who needs no escape from birth and death, who is already beyond, who has never been born and who has never died? It needs no knowledge from the precepts, it knows directly the existence itself."
But Gao could not understand.
GAO ASKED, "THEN WHAT IS THE USE OF THE BUDDHA'S PRECEPTS?"
He started arguing. That is almost always the case with newcomers. They think they can argue with the master. They don't know a thing, but their mind is full of junk and all kinds of arguments and theories and creeds. He started arguing without listening to what the master had said. His argument was: "If there is someone who does not need the precepts and who does not need to get out of the circle of birth and death, then what is the use of the Buddha's precepts?"
It looks logical, rational -- but only to those who don't know meditation, only to those who know only the mind.
YAKUSAN SAID, "THIS NOVICE STILL HAS LIPS AND TEETH."
-- lips to speak, teeth to bite. He does not understand anything but at least he has lips which move and he has teeth to bite in argument.
AT THIS, THE NOVICE BOWED AND WITHDREW.
This bowing down has become ritual in Japan. He has not understood anything. He has wasted the time of the master. His bowing down has no gratitude in it, it is simply a formality just as when you shake hands without love and warmth.
Have you watched people shaking hands? Different hands give different messages. Some hands are so cold, as if you are holding a dead branch of a tree; nothing moves from those hands. Some hands are so warm and loving that you can feel a tingling, some energy moving in you; they are ready to share. And there are hands which suck your energy; after holding the hand you will feel a strange weakness coming over you.
In Japan, bowing down has become a ritual. It has lost the beauty of gratitude.
I have seen it happen for almost fifteen years now, since the Westerners started coming to me .... The Indians may touch the feet, but very rarely as gratitude, most often just as a formality. Thousands of people have touched my feet, and I have been watching the subtle nuances, the differences of their energies. Most of them had no gratitude, nothing; it was just the routine in India.
When the Westerners started coming to me .... It is not a routine in the West. In fact, the whole Western culture and the educational system teaches you pride, ego. It is against touching somebody's feet. So when the Westerners were here, it was very difficult for them to touch the feet, just as it was very easy for the Indians to touch the feet.
Very rarely did an Indian touch the feet with gratitude, but when the Westerner felt the gratitude arising in him, his touching the feet was more authentic. It was not formality, it was not a built-in program in his mind. In fact, he himself was taken aback. What is he doing? Against his whole education, against his whole culture, he is touching the feet! But when you come across a person to whom you feel gratitude, there is no other way to express it.
This novice did not understand anything, but bowed down and withdrew.
DOGO THEN CAME FORWARD AND STOOD BY YAKUSAN, WHO SAID TO HIM, "THAT LIMPING NOVICE WHO JUST CAME, AFTER ALL HAS SOME LIFE IN HIM."
DOGO SAID, "HE IS NOT TO BE ENTIRELY BELIEVED YET -- YOU SHOULD TEST HIM AGAIN FIRST."
The master said, "He may not have understood me -- that is not the problem, he is a new man -- but one thing is certain:
THAT LIMPING NOVICE WHO JUST CAME, AFTER ALL HAS SOME LIFE IN HIM."
He has come from so far away. Although he knows nothing, he could not understand a word, but still he has some life.
Dogo, his old disciple, said, "HE'S NOT TO BE ENTIRELY BELIEVED YET -- YOU SHOULD TEST HIM AGAIN FIRST."
WHEN EVENING CAME, YAKUSAN WENT UP INTO THE HALL; HE CALLED, "WHERE IS THE NOVICE WHO CAME EARLIER?"
GAO THEN CAME FORWARD FROM THE ASSEMBLY AND STOOD THERE, AND YAKUSAN SAID TO HIM, "I HEAR THAT CHANGAN IS VERY NOISY."
The place he was coming from was a marketplace, very noisy.
GAO SAID, "MY PROVINCE IS PEACEFUL."
When he said, "My province is very peaceful," he was saying, "My inner territory is very peaceful. It does not matter that the place I come from is very noisy. The noise is just outside. Inside my space is very peaceful."
YAKUSAN ASKED, WITH MUCH JOY, "DID YOU REALIZE THIS FROM READING SCRIPTURES OR FROM MAKING INQUIRIES?", TO WHICH GAO REPLIED, "I DID NOT GET IT FROM READING SCRIPTURES OR FROM MAKING INQUIRIES."
YAKUSAN SAID, "MANY PEOPLE DO NOT READ SCRIPTURES OR MAKE INQUIRIES -- WHY DON'T THEY GET IT?"
GAO SAID, "I DON'T SAY THEY DON'T GET IT -- IT IS JUST THAT THEY DON'T AGREE TO TAKE IT UP."
Why do so many people not become buddhas, if everybody is intrinsically a buddha? Just because you are too much occupied in other things. Perhaps the thirst has not arisen, perhaps you are afraid to become a buddha. In these insane crowds, to become a buddha is taking a great risk.
GAO SAID, "I DON'T SAY THEY DON'T GET IT -- IT IS JUST THAT THEY DON'T AGREE TO TAKE IT UP."
The master was delighted. Although the novice had not understood what Yakusan had asked him, he must have meditated over it, tried to find what the master was saying: "Why did I miss it?" By the evening he was a totally different person.
In the morning he had come as a newcomer, by the evening he had become an old disciple, a very ancient disciple. His answers show a tremendous transformation -- just in one day.
It can happen in one minute!
It can happen in one second!
It can happen in a split-second! It is only a question of how intense your effort is to reach to your center.
He must have felt deeply the sadness that he had come across a master and missed him, and he must have felt utterly stupid that he had started arguing with the master. He cleaned himself just in one day, and by the evening, when the master made inquiries, he was almost a different person. The master was very much delighted.
Such seekers are needed in the world. These are the people who can rise to the ultimate heights.
I know you are here with an intense urgency, and this intense urgency makes me delighted. Your spring is not far away. Soon you will be full of spiritual blossoms. Your potentiality will come to its actualization. You will see yourself as a buddha.
It is not a question of believing ... I am absolutely against belief. I am a scientist of the subjective world. Just as science does not allow belief, only inquiry, investigation in the objective world, I am a scientist of the subjective world. I don't allow any belief, only inquiry, search. And if you have the thirst, there is no need to wait. Before sunrise your enlightenment can be complete.
Kyorai wrote:
WHATEVER HAPPENS,
NOT TALKING ABOUT IT
MAKES FOR PEACE.
Kyorai was not only a poet, but also a master. Saying this -- "WHATEVER HAPPENS, NOT TALKING ABOUT IT MAKES FOR PEACE" -- he is talking about his own commune.
I have been asked again and again why I declare people enlightened only when they die. This is simply to keep the peace of the commune. If I declare somebody to be enlightened, you will kill him. You will not be able to tolerate that this man has become enlightened. You will find a thousand faults in him, you will condemn him, and you will be very jealous.
I have made it a point that I will declare people enlightened only when you cannot be jealous, and you cannot quarrel, because they are already gone.
And when I leave the world, I will leave a note about the people who are enlightened, but in deep secrecy. The note will remain with Nirvano, so whenever somebody out of the list dies, declare it.
Declaring anybody enlightened while he is alive is certainly going to create great trouble for the man who is declared enlightened. Now he will feel very much embarrassed smoking cigarettes. And what to do with the girlfriends? Enlightened, and you have a girlfriend?
Only Sardar Gurudayal Singh is an exception.
But ordinarily you will feel very much in difficulty, drinking wine, going to the pub -- even just ordinary beer. And particularly my Germans, what will they do without beer? For Germans I will have to make an exception.
I don't want you to be embarrassed. It is good that you are trying to be enlightened. On the way enjoy everything, and I will declare you enlightened when you are completely at rest in the grave. Nobody can disturb you -- no beer, no cigarettes, no girlfriends, nothing. At the most you can toss and turn inside there. If you want, I can put some chewing-gum in every grave, so whenever you feel too much upset, just start chewing gum!
Kyorai is right: WHATEVER HAPPENS, NOT TALKING ABOUT IT MAKES FOR PEACE. And I want my commune to be absolutely peaceful.
Next: Chapter 4: The sutra is long, the night is short, Question 1
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