A WRESTLER NAMED O-NAMI GREAT WAVES, WAS IMMENSELY STRONG AND HIGHLY SKILLED IN THE ART OF WRESTLING. IN PRIVATE BE DEFEATED EVEN HIS VERY TEACHER, BUT IN PUBLIC HIS OWN YOUNG PUPILS COULD THROW HIM.

IN HIS TROUBLE HE WENT TO A ZEN MASTER WHO WAS STOPPING AT A NEARBY TEMPLE BY THE SEA, AND ASKED FOR COUNSEL.

"GREAT WAVES IS YOUR NAME, " SAID THE MASTER, "SO STAY IN THIS TEMPLE TONIGHT AND LISTEN TO THE WAVES OF THE SEA. IMAGINE YOU ARE THOSE WAVES. FORGET YOU ARE A WRESTLER, AND BECOME THOSE HUGE WAVES SWEEPING EVERYTHING BEFORE THEM."

O-NAMI REMAINED. HE TRIED TO THINK ONLY OF THE WAVES, BUT BE THOUGHT OF MANY THINGS. THEN GRADUALLY HE DID THINK ONLY OF THE WAVES. THEY ROLLED LARGER AND LARGER AS THE NIGHT WORE ON. THEY SWEPT AWAY THE FLOWERS IN THE VASES BEFORE THE BUDDHA; THEY SWEPT AWAY THE VASES. EVEN THE BRONZE BUDDHA WAS SWEPT AWAY. BY DAWN THE TEMPLE WAS ONLY SURGING WATER, AND O-NAMI SAT THERE WITH A FAINT SMILE ON HIS FACE.

THAT DAY HE ENTERED THE PUBLIC WRESTLING AND WON EVERY BOUT, AND FROM THAT DAY NO ONE IN JAPAN COULD EVER THROW HIM.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IS A DISEASE. Consciousness is health, self-consciousness is disease -- something has gone wrong. Some tie has arisen, some complex. The river of consciousness is not flowing naturally -- something foreign has entered into the river of consciousness, something alien; something that cannot be absorbed by the river; something that cannot become part of the river; something that resists becoming part of the river.

Self-consciousness is morbidity. Self-consciousness is a frozen state, blocked. It is like a dirty pool -- going nowhere; just drying, evaporating and dying. Of course, it stinks.

So the first thing to be understood is the difference between self-consciousness and consciousness.

Consciousness has no idea of 'I', of ego. It has no idea of one's separation from existence. It does not know any barrier, it knows no boundaries. It is one with existence; it is in a deep at-onement. There is no conflict between the individual and the Whole. One is simply flowing into the Whole, and the Whole is flowing into one. It is like breathing: you breathe in, you breathe out -- when you breathe in the Whole enters you, when you breathe out you enter the Whole. It is a constant flow, a constant sharing. The Whole goes on giving to you, and you go on giving to the Whole. The balance is never lost.

But in a self-conscious man something has gone wrong. He takes in but he never gives out. He goes on accumulating and he has become incapable of sharing. He goes on making boundaries around himself so nobody can trespass. He goes on putting boards around his being: No Trespassing Allowed. By and by, he becomes a grave, a dead being -- because life is in sharing.

A self is a dead thing, alive only for the name's sake. Consciousness is infinite life, life abundant. It knows no boundaries. But ordinarily everybody is self-conscious.

To be self-conscious is to be unconscious. This paradox has to be understood: to be self-conscious is to be unconscious; and to be unself-conscious, or to be self-unconscious, is to become conscious. And when there is no self, when this small, tiny self disappears, you attain to the real Self with a capital 'S' -- call it the supreme Self, the Self of all.

So it is both: no-self in the sense that it is not only yours, and the ultimate Self also because it is the self of all. You lose your tiny center and you attain to the center of existence itself. Suddenly you become infinite; suddenly you are no longer bound, you have no cage around your being. And infinite power starts flowing through you. You become a vehicle -- clear, with no obstructions. You become a flute and Krishna can sing through you. You become just a passage -- empty, nothing of your own. This is what I call surrender.

Self-consciousness is a non-surrendering attitude -- it is the attitude of conflict, fight, struggle. If you are fighting with existence you will be self-conscious and, of course, you will be defeated again and again and again. Each step is going to be a step in more and more defeat -- your frustration is certain. You are doomed from the very beginning because you cannot hold this self against the universe. It is impossible. You cannot exist separately. You cannot be a monk.

This word 'monk' is good. You must be aware of similar words like 'monopoly' -- that comes from the same root; or 'monastery' -- that comes from the same root; or 'monologue' -- that comes from the same root. A monk is one who is trying to be himself, who is trying to define his boundaries, and who is trying to exist separate from this total existence. His whole effort is egoistic -- it is bound to fail. No monk can ever succeed.

You can succeed only with God, never against Him. You can succeed only with the Whole, never against It. So if you are frustrated, in deep misery, remember: you are creating that misery. And you are creating it by a subtle trick: you are fighting against the Whole.

It happened -- it must have been a rainy season like this -- and the village river was flooded. And people came running to Mulla Nasrudin and said, "Your wife has fallen in the flooded river. Run fast! Save her!"

Nasrudin ran. He jumped into the river and started swimming upstream. The people who had gathered to see, they shouted, "What are you doing, Nasrudin? Your wife cannot go upstream -- the stream has taken her downwards."

Nasrudin said, "What are you talking about? I know my wife: SHE CAN ONLY GO UPSTREAM!"

The ego is always an effort to go upstream. People don't like to do easy things. Before they want to do them, they want to make them hard, difficult. People enjoy doing hard things. Why? Because when you face a hard thing, your ego becomes subtle, sharp; there is a challenge.

When the first group reached to the top of Everest, somebody asked Edmund Hillary, "Why did you take such a risk? It was dangerous -- many others have died before you and have not been able to reach." And the person who was asking was unable to understand why people go on trying to reach Everest and losing their lives. What is the point of it? What is there to achieve?

Edmund Hillary is reported to have said, "We cannot rest as long as this Everest remains unconquered. We have to conquer it!" There is nothing to get in it, but the very presence of Everest unconquered is a challenge. To whom is it a challenge? -- to the ego.

You watch your own life: many things you are doing only because of the ego. You want to make a big house. You may be perfectly comfortable in your house as it is, but you want to make a big palace. That big palace is not for you, that big palace is for the ego. You may be perfectly comfortable as you are, but you go on accumulating money. That money is not for you; that money is for the ego. How can you rest unless you have become the richest man in the world? -- but what are you going to do by becoming the richest man in the world? You will become more and more miserable -- because misery comes out of conflict. Misery is an indication that you are in conflict. So don't throw your responsibility on something else.

People are very rationalizing: if they are miserable they will say, "What can we do? -- the past lives' karmas are making us miserable." All rubbish! Past life karmas must have made you miserable, but in past lives! Why should they wait up to now? There is no point in waiting. Your present karmas are making you miserable. Throwing it on past lives makes it easy -- what can you do? You have to be the way you are. Now nothing can be done; the past cannot be undone -- you cannot erase it just by waving your hand. There is no magic trick that can help you to erase your past. It has happened and it has happened forever; now it is going to remain absolute; there is no possibility of changing it. That relieves you of the burden, and you think: "So okay, I have to be miserable because of the past karmas."

You can throw the responsibility on the Devil as Christians go on doing. Hindus go on throwing the responsibility on past karmas; Christians go on throwing the responsibility on the Devil -- he must be creating traps for you. It is not you -- it is the Devil who goes on trapping you into miseries, and who goes on pulling you down towards hell. Who is bothered with you? Why should this Devil be bothered with you?

Then there are Marxists, Communists, Socialists -- they say it is the social structure, the economic system, that makes people miserable. Then there are Freudians, psychoanalysts; they say it is the child and mother relationship. But it is always something else -- it is never you. It is never you in the present.

And I would like to tell you: It is you. If you are miserable, you and only you are responsible. Neither the past nor the social structure nor the economic system -- nothing is going to help.

If you remain you, in any sort of a society, you will remain miserable; in any economic system you will remain miserable; in any world you will remain miserable -- if you remain you.

And the first, basic change happens when you start dropping this conflict with existence. That is the only meaning of all the great religions when they emphasize: Drop the ego! They are saying: Drop the conflict. I would like you to remember it more, because 'drop the ego' seems too metaphysical. 'Ego'? -- where is the ego? what is the ego? The word seems to be known, you seem to be well acquainted with it, but it seems to be very vague, cannot be grasped. I would like to make it more practical: drop the conflict -- because ego is a by-product of your conflicting attitude.

People talk of conquering nature, people talk of conquering this and that -- how can you conquer nature? You are part of it. How can the part conquer the Whole? See the foolishness of it, the stupidity. You can be with the Whole in harmony, or you can be in conflict with the Whole in disharmony. Disharmony results in misery; harmony results in bliss.

Harmony naturally results in a deep silence, joy, delight. Conflict results in anxiety, anguish, stress, tension.

THE EGO IS NOTHING but all the tensions that you have created around yourself. And in the first place there is no need to create it -- but why does man go on creating it? There must be some reason. Why does everybody go on creating the self? The real Self is unknown -- that's why. And it is very difficult to live without a self, so we create a pseudo-self, a substitute self. The real Self is unknown.

In fact, the real Self never becomes absolutely known; it remains mysterious, it remains ineffable, indefinable. The real Self is so vast that you cannot define it, and the real Self is so mysterious that you cannot penetrate it to the very core. The real Self is the self of the Whole. It is not possible for human intellect to penetrate, to ponder, to contemplate it.

I have heard, there is a famous story of a wise man who was called by Alexander the Great. And Alexander asked him, "I have heard that you have come to know what God is, so please tell me. I have been in search, and people say you have attained, so enlighten me about God, what God is."

It is said the wise man said, "You give me at least twenty-four hours to think over it."

Twenty-four hours passed, and Alexander was waiting very eagerly. The wise man came and he said, "Seven days, will be needed."

And then seven days passed, and Alexander was very impatient. The wise man came and he said, "One year will be needed."

Alexander said, "What do you mean, one year will be needed? You know or you don't? If you know, you know -- tell me. Why waste time?"

The wise man laughed and he said, "The more I ponder, the more it becomes unknowable. The more I know, the more difficult it becomes to say that I know. Twenty-four hours I tried and tried, and it started slipping from my hands. It is very elusive -- it is like mercury. Then I asked for seven days -- that didn't help. Now, at least one year -- and I am not certain that I will be able to bring a definition."

The wise man did well. He must have been really wise, because there is no way to define the REAL Self. But man cannot live without a self -- then one feels so empty! Then one feels like a wheel without a hub; then one feels like a circumference without a center. No, it is hard to live without a self.

To know the real Self is arduous; one has to travel long to arrive home. One has to knock on many doors before one comes to the right door. The easy trick is: you can create a false self. To grow real roses is difficult; you can purchase plastic roses. They will not deceive you, but they will deceive the neighbors. Mm? -- that is the point of the self, the ego. It cannot deceive you; you know well that you yourself don't know who you are -- but at least it can deceive the neighbors. In the outside world at least you have a certain label, who you are.

Have you ever thought about it? If somebody asks, "Who are you?" what do you answer? You say your name. Name is not yours, because you came in the world without a name; you came nameless. It is not your property -- it has been given to you. And any name -- A-B-C-D -- would have been useful; it is arbitrary. It is not essential in any way.

If you are called 'Ram', good; if you are called 'Hari', good -- it makes no difference. Any name would have been as applicable to you as any other. It is just a label. A name is needed to call you by, but it has nothing to do with your being. Or you say, "I am a doctor"; or you say, "I am an engineer" -- or a businessman, or a painter, or this and that -- but nothing says anything about you.

When you say, "I am a doctor," you say something about your profession, not about you; you say how you earn your living. You DON'T say anything about life; you say something about your living. You may be earning your living as an engineer, or as a doctor, or as a businessman -- it is irrelevant. It does not say anything about you.

Or you say your father's name, your mother's name, your family tree -- that too is irrelevant because that doesn't define you. Your being born in a particular family is accidental; you could as well have been born in another family, and you would not even have noticed the difference.

These are just utilitarian tricks -- and man becomes a self. This self is a pseudo-self, a created, manufactured self, home-made. And your own real Self remains deep down hidden in mist and mystery.

I was reading:

A Frenchman was crossing the desert with an Arab guide. Day after day, the Arab never failed to kneel on the burning sand and call upon his God. At last, one evening the unbeliever said to the Arab, "How do you know there is a God?"

The guide fixed his eye upon the scoffer for a moment and then replied: "How do I know there is a God? How did I know that a camel and not a man passed last night? Was is not by the print of his hoof in the sand?" And pointing to the sun whose last rays were fading over the horizon, he added, "That footprint is not of man."

Your Self cannot be created by you; it cannot be man-made. Your Self you have brought with you; it is you. How can you create it? To create it you will have to be there in the first place. That is the meaning when Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus, say that man is a creature. That means that man has not created himself, that's all. The creator is somewhere hidden in the unknown. We have come out of some mysterious life-source. Your Self is not yours!

This false self is not yours because you have created it; and your real Self is not yours because it is still in God, you are still rooted in God.

THIS FALSE SELF that we go on carrying in our lives like a flag is always in danger of being damaged; it is very fragile, it is very weak -- it has to be: it is man-made. How can man make something deathless? He himself has to pass through many deaths, so whatsoever he produces is always mortal.

Hence the fear, continuous fear that: "I may be lost. My self may be destroyed." A continuous fear goes on trembling into your being; you can never be certain about this false self of yours -- you know it is false. You may avoid the fact, but you know it is false. It is gathered together, manufactured, it is mechanical; it is not organic.

Have you observed the difference between an organic unity and a mechanical unity? You make a car engine; you can purchase parts from the market and you can fix those parts, and the engine starts functioning like a unity. Or you can purchase parts of a radio from the market and you can fix them, and the radio starts functioning like a unity. Somehow it comes to have a self. No part in itself can function as a radio; all parts together start functioning like a radio -- but still the unity is mechanical, forced from the outside. Then you throw seeds into the ground, and those seeds die into the soil and a plant arises. This unity is organic; it is not forced from outside -- it was in the seed itself. The seed goes on spreading, goes on gathering a thousand and one things from the earth, from the air, from the sun, from the sky -- but the unity is coming from within. The center comes first and then the circumference. In a mechanical unity the circumference comes first and then the center.

Man is an organic unity. You were a seed one day, like any tree; in the soil of your mother's womb you started gathering your circumference. Center came first, center preceded circumference. And now you have forgotten the center completely. You live on the circumference and you think this is your whole life. This circumference, and continuously living on it, creates a sort of self, a pseudo-self, which gives you a feeling that yes, you are somebody. But it is always trembling because it has no organic unity in it.

Hence, the fear of death. If you know your real Self you will never be afraid of death-there is no question, because the organic unity never dies. Organic unity is immortal. Only mechanical unities are put together and die. That which is put together, one day will fall apart. Mechanical unity has a beginning and an end. The organic unity has no beginning and no end -- it is an eternal process.

Do you know your center? If you don't know it then you will be continuously afraid. Hence, self-consciousness is always afraid, always trembling. And you always need support from others -- somebody to appreciate you; somebody to clap; somebody to say how beautiful you are or how intelligent. You need somebody to say these things to you, like suggestions, so that you can believe that yes, you are intelligent, you are beautiful, you are strong. But see the point: you depend on others.

A foolish man comes to you and says you are very intelligent. And in fact, you can look intelligent only to a foolish man. If he is more intelligent than you, of course, you will not look intelligent to him. So a foolish man comes and certifies your intelligence, and you are very happy. You can look beautiful only to an ugly man. If he is more beautiful than you, you will look ugly -- because it is all relative. And you are certified by ugly people that you are beautiful, and you are tremendously happy.

What type of intelligence is this which has to be certified by foolish people? What type of beauty is this which has to be certified by ugly people? It is completely false. It is idiotic. But we go on searching. We go on searching in the outside world to find some support for our ego, somebody to give a little support, to become a prop. Otherwise there is always the danger that our ego will collapse. So we have to support it from this side and from that and continuous worry arises.

That's why you are more graceful when you are alone -- because you are not worried. Nobody is there to see you. You are more innocent when you are alone -- in your bathroom you are more innocent, you are more like a child. Again you stand before the mirror and make faces, and you enjoy it. But if you become aware that your small child is looking through the keyhole, immediately you are totally different. Now the ego is at stake. That's why people are so much afraid of others. Alone, there is no anxiety.

There is a famous Zen story:

A Zen master was making a painting, and he had his chief disciple sit by his side to tell him when the painting was perfect. The disciple was worried and the master was also worried, because the disciple had never seen the master do anything imperfect. But that day things started going wrong. The master tried, and the more he tried, the more it was a mess.

In Japan or in China, the whole art of calligraphy is done on rice-paper, on a certain paper, a very sensitive paper, very fragile. If you hesitate a little, for centuries it can be known where the calligrapher hesitated -- because more ink spreads into the rice-paper and makes it a mess. It is very difficult to deceive on rice-paper. You have to go on flowing; you are not to hesitate. Even for a single moment. split moment, if you hesitate -- what to do? -- missed, already missed. And one who has a keen eye will immediately say, "It is not a Zen painting at all" -- because a Zen painting has to be a spontaneous painting, flowing.

The master tried and tried and the more he tried -- he started perspiring. And the disciple was sitting there and shaking his head again and again negatively: 'No, this is not perfect.' And more and more mistakes were being made by the master.

Then the ink was running out so the master said, "You go out and prepare more ink." While the disciple was outside preparing the ink, the master did his masterpiece. When he came in he said, "Master, but this is perfect! What happened?"

The master laughed; he said, "I became aware of one thing: your presence. The very idea that somebody is there to appreciate or to condemn, to say no or yes, disturbed my inner tranquility. Now I will never be disturbed. I have come to know that I was trying to make it perfect and that was the only reason for its not being perfect."

Try to make something perfect and it will remain imperfect. Do it naturally and it is always perfect. Nature is perfect; effort is imperfect. So whenever you are doing something too much, you are destroying.

That's why it happens: everybody talks so beautifully; everybody is a talker; people talk their whole life -- but just put them on a platform and tell them to talk to a crowd, and suddenly they become dumb; suddenly they forget everything, suddenly they cannot utter a single word. Or, even if they do utter, it is not graceful, it is not natural, it is not flowing. What has happened? And you have known this man talking so beautifully to his friends, to his wife, to his children. These are also people, the same people -- why are you afraid? You have become self-conscious. Now the ego is at stake: you are trying to perform something.

Listen carefully: whenever you try to perform something, you are searching food for the ego. Whenever you are natural and let things happen, they are perfect, and then there is no problem. When you are natural and let things happen, God is at the back with you. When you are afraid, trembling, trying to prove something, you have lost God. In your fear, you have forgotten Him. You are looking more at the people and you have forgotten your source. Self-consciousness becomes a weakness. A person who is unself-conscious is strong, but his strength has nothing to do with himself -- it comes from the beyond.

WHEN YOU ARE SELF-CONSCIOUS, you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious, you are really showing symptoms that you don't know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.

It happened:

As a pretty girl passed by, Mulla Nasrudin turned to look. His wife said with a pout, "Every time you see a pretty girl you forget you are married."

"That's where you are wrong," said the Mulla. "Nothing makes me more aware of the fact!"

Whenever you are self-conscious you are simply showing that you are not conscious of the Self at all. You don't know who you are. If you had known, then there would have been no problem -- then you are not seeking opinions; then you are not worried what others say about you. It is irrelevant! In fact, nobody ever says anything about you -- whenever people say something about you, they are saying it about themselves.

One day it happened: I was in Jaipur and a man came in the morning to see me, and he said, "You are divine."

I said, "You are right!"

He was sitting there and another man came and he was very much against me, and then he said, "You are almost devilish."

I said, "You are right!"

The first man became a little worried. He said, "What do you mean? You told me also, 'You are right,' and you say to this man also, 'You are right' -- we can't be both right."

I told him, "Not only two -- millions of people can be right about me, because whatsoever they say about me they say about themselves. How can they know me? It is impossible -- they have not even known themselves yet. Whatsoever they say is their interpretation. "

So the man said, "Then who are you? If this is my interpretation that you are divine, and this is his interpretation that you are evil, then who are you?"

I said, "I am just myself. And I have no interpretation about myself, and there is no need. I am simply delighted in being myself! -- whatsoever that means. I am happy in being myself."

Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves. But you become very shaky, because you are still clinging to a false center. That false center depends on others, so you are always looking to what people are saying about you. And you are always following other people, you are always trying to satisfy them. You are always trying to be respectable. You are always trying to decorate your ego. This is suicidal.

Rather than being disturbed by what others say, you should start looking inside yourself. To know the real Self is not so cheap. But people are always hankering for cheap things.

It happened:

When the pain in Mulla Nasrudin's back became unbearable, he reluctantly went to a specialist to diagnose his problem.

"Well," said the doctor, "your problem can be cured by an operation, two weeks in the hospital and six months totally horizontal."

"Doctor, I can't afford the cost of all that!" shouted Nasrudin.

"Well then, for twenty-five rupees I can retouch the X-ray," suggested the doctor.

This is cheap! -- retouch the X-ray -- but that is not going to make you healthy. That's what we are doing: continuously retouching the X-ray, and thinking that somehow the miracle will happen. When you are decorating your ego you are retouching the X-ray. That is not going to help in any way; it is not going to help you become healthy. But it is cheaper: no operation is needed; at no cost. But what is the point? Your misery remains.

You become respectable and your misery remains. You become highly praised by the society -- your misery remains. You are decorated by medals, gold medals -- Padma Bhushan, Victoria Cross -- but your misery remains. These gold medals are not going to destroy your misery: they are like retouching the X-ray. All decoration on the ego, for the ego, is nothing but deceiving yourself.

And continuously you go on becoming weaker and weaker and weaker -- because the ego goes on becoming weaker every day. Your body will become weaker, your mind will become weaker, and by and by the ego that you have created out of the body and mind combination will become weaker. Fear will become greater and greater; you will be continuously sitting on a volcano that can any day explode. It will not allow you rest. It will not allow you relaxation. It will not allow you any moments of peace.

Once you understand it then the whole energy is put into another direction. One has to know oneself. One has not to be worried about what others say about you.

Madhuri has sent me a very beautiful joke:

So there was this guy, and nobody ever noticed him. He did not have any friends. He was at a salesman's convention in Miami, see, and he saw that everybody else was happy and laughing and paying attention to each other, but not to him.

One evening he was sitting really bummed out when he got to talking with another salesman. He told him his problem. "Oh, I know how to fix that up," cried the other. "You just get a camel and ride it around in the streets, and in no time everybody will notice you and you will have all the friends you want."

So, whaddya know? There was a circus going out of business and they wanted to sell a camel. The man bought it and rode up and down the streets on it, and, sure enough, everybody paid attention to him and noticed him. He felt on top of the world.

But then a week later, the camel disappeared. The man was heartbroken and immediately phoned the local newspaper to place an ad for his lost camel.

"Is it a boy or a girl camel?" enquired the guy on the phone.

"A boy or a girl? How should I know?" raged the man. Then he thought, "Oh, yeah, of course, it was a boy, that's right."

"How do you know?" enquired the adman.

"Because," said the man, "every time I rode up and down the streets people yelled, 'Look at that schmuck on the camel! "'

'Schmuck' is a Yiddish word, a very beautiful word. It has two meanings, and very relevant meanings. One meaning is 'the idiot'; another meaning, in the beginning looks very far-fetched, means the male genital organ. But in a way both meanings are very deeply related. Idiots live only as sexual beings -- they don't know any other life. So 'schmuck' is beautiful. If a person has known only sex as life, he is stupid, he is an idiot.

Now, people were saying, "Look at that idiot on the camel!" but the man thinks they were talking about the male genital organ of the camel, not about him.

The ego is very deceptive. It goes on hearing what it wants to hear. It goes on interpreting what it wants to interpret. It never sees the fact. It never allows the fact to reveal itself to you. People who live in the ego live behind curtains. And those curtains are not inactive -- they are active curtains. Whatsoever passes through the curtain, the curtain changes it.

People go on living in a mental world of their own creation. Ego is the center of their world, of the false world -- call it 'illusion', 'maya' -- and around the ego they go on creating a world... which is nobody else's world. Only they live in that world.

When you drop the ego, you drop a whole world that you have created around it. For the first time you are able to see things as they are -- not as you would like them to be. And when you are capable of knowing the facts of life, you become capable of knowing the truth.

The facility of life is the first step towards truth. And ego is the most falsifying agent.

NOW THIS STORY

A WRESTLER NAMED O-NAMI, GREAT WAVES, WAS IMMENSELY STRONG AND HIGHLY SKILLED IN THE ART OF WRESTLING. IN PRIVATE HE DEFEATED EVEN HIS VERY TEACHER, BUT IN PUBLIC HIS OWN YOUNG PUPILS COULD THROW HIM.

IN HIS TROUBLE HE WENT TO A ZEN MASTER WHO WAS STOPPING AT A NEARBY TEMPLE BY THE SEA, AND ASKED FOR COUNSEL.

"GREAT WAVES IS YOUR NAME, " SAID THE MASTER, "SO STAY IN THIS TEMPLE TONIGHT AND LISTEN TO THE WAVES OF THE SEA. IMAGINE YOU ARE THOSE WAVES, FORGET YOU ARE A WRESTLER AND BECOME THOSE HUGE WAVES SWEEPING EVERYTHING BEFORE THEM."

O-NAMI REMAINED. HE TRIED TO THINK ONLY OF THE WAVES, BUT HE THOUGHT OF MANY THINGS. THEN GRADUALLY HE DID THINK ONLY OF THE WAVES. THEY ROLLED LARGER AND LARGER AS THE NIGHT WORE ON. THEY SWEPT AWAY THE FLOWERS IN THE VASES BEFORE THE BUDDHA, THEY SWEPT AWAY THE VASES. EVEN THE BRONZE BUDDHA WAS SWEPT AWAY. BY DAWN THE TEMPLE WAS ONLY SURGING WATER, AND O-NAMI SAT THERE WITH A FAINT SMILE ON HIS FACE.

THAT DAY HE ENTERED THE PUBLIC WRESTLING AND WON EVERY BOUT, AND FROM THAT DAY NO ONE IN JAPAN COULD EVER THROW HIM.

This is a story of self-consciousness and how to lose it, and how to drop it, and how to get rid of it. We will try to enter into it step by step.

A WRESTLER NAMED O-NAMI, GREAT WAVES, WAS IMMENSELY STRONG...

Everybody is immensely strong. You don't know your strength; that is another matter. Everybody is immensely strong -- has to be, because everybody is rooted in God, everybody is rooted in this universe. However small you may look, you are not small-you cannot be by the very nature of things.

Now physicists say that in a small atom so much energy is confined -- Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by atomic energy. And the atom is so small -- nobody has yet seen it! It is just an inference, a deduction. Nobody has seen the atom. With all the sophisticated instruments science has today, nobody has seen the atom -- so small and such vast energy.

If the atom can have so much energy, what to say about man? What to say about this small flame of consciousness in man? If some day this small flame bursts forth, it is bound to become an infinite source of energy and light. That's how it has happened to a Buddha, or to a Jesus.

Everybody is immensely strong because everybody is immensely divine. Everybody is strong because everybody is rooted in God, in the very origin of existence. Remember it

The human mind tends to forget it. When you forget it, you become weak. When you become weak,.you start trying some artificial ways to become strong. That's what millions of people are doing.

Searching for money, what are you really searching? You are searching power, you are searching strength. Searching for prestige, political authority, what are you searching? You are searching power, strength -- and strength is all the time available just by the corner. You are searching in wrong places.

A WRESTLER NAMED O-NAMI, GREAT WAVES...

We are all great waves of the ocean. We may have forgotten it, but the ocean has not forgotten us. We may have so much forgotten it that we have no idea of what an ocean is -- still we are in the ocean. Even if a wave forgets and becomes oblivious of the ocean, it is still in the ocean -- because the wave cannot exist without the ocean. The ocean can exist without the wave -- maybe it can exist without the wave -- but the wave cannot exist without the ocean. The wave is nothing but waving of the ocean; it is a process, it is not an entity. It is just the ocean delighting in its being.

God in His delight peoples the earth; God in His delight peoples existence. It is ocean searching ocean -- just playful. It has tremendous energy -- what to do with it?

A WRESTLER NAMED O-NAMI, GREAT WAVES, WAS IMMENSELY STRONG...

But this strength is possible only when the wave knows that it is a wave of a great, infinite ocean. If the wave forgets this, then the wave is very weak. And our 'forgetory' is tremendous; our memory is very small, very tiny -- forgetory tremendous. We go on forgetting. And that which is very obvious, we forget very easily. That which is very close, we forget very easily. That which is always available we forget very easily.

Do you remember your breathing? You remember only when there is some trouble: you have a cold, breathing trouble or something; otherwise, who remembers breathing? That's why people remember God only when they are in trouble. Otherwise, who remembers? And God is closer than your breathing, closer than you are to yourself; He is more close than yourself. One tends to forget.

Have you watched it? If you don't have something, you remember. When you have it, you forget -- you take it for granted. Because God cannot be lost, it is very difficult to remember. Only very rare people become capable of remembering God. To remember that which we have never been away from is very difficult.

A fish in the ocean forgets the ocean. Throw the fish on the shore, in the sands, hot sands, and then the fish knows, then the fish remembers. But there is no way to throw you out of God; there is no shore to Him -- God is a shoreless ocean. And you are not like a fish, you are like a wave. You are exactly like God; your nature and God's nature are the same.

That's the symbolic meaning of choosing this name for this story.

HE WAS HIGHLY SKILLED IN THE ART OF WRESTLING. IN PRIVATE HE DEFEATED EVEN HIS OWN TEACHER...

but in private, because in private he must have been capable of forgetting his self.

Remember this sutra: When you remember your self, you forget God; when you forget your self, you remember God -- and you cannot remember both together. When the wave thinks of herself as a wave she forgets that she is an ocean. When the wave knows herself as the ocean, how can she remember herself now as a wave? Only one is possible. Either the wave can think about herself as a wave, or as the ocean. It is a gestalt. You cannot remember both together -- that is impossible.

IN PRIVATE HE DEFEATED EVEN HIS OWN MASTER, BUT IN PUBLIC HIS OWN YOUNG PUPILS COULD THROW HIM.

In privacy he must have been completely forgetful of his own self, the ego. Then he was tremendously powerful. In public he must have been becoming too self-conscious. Then he was weak. Self-consciousness is weakness. Self-forgetfulness is strength.

IN HIS TROUBLE HE WENT TO A ZEN MASTER WHO WAS STOPPING AT A NEARBY TEMPLE BY THE SEA, AND ASKED FOR COUNSEL.

"GREAT WAVES IS YOUR NAME, " SAID THE MASTER, "SO STAY IN THIS TEMPLE TONIGHT AND LISTEN TO THE WAVES OF THE SEA."

A MASTER IS ONE who can create devices for everybody. A master is one who has no fixed device. He looks at the man, this man O-nami, Great Waves -- just his name and he creates a device around his name.

That's what I go on doing: I give you a name and create a device around it. I give you a name so that you can remember your device, you can remember your technique, so that it becomes a constant mindfulness for you, a reminder, an arrow pointing out your path continuously.

Just coming to know that his name is O-nami, Great Waves, the master said:

"GREAT WAVES IS YOUR NAME, SO STAY IN THIS TEMPLE TONIGHT AND LISTEN TO THE WAVES OF THE OCEAN."

Listening is one of the basic secrets of entering into the temple of God. Listening means passivity. Listening means forgetting yourself completely -- only then can you listen. When you listen attentively to somebody, you forget yourself. If you cannot forget yourself, you never listen. If you are too self-conscious about yourself, you simply pretend that you are listening -- you don't listen. You may nod your head; you may sometimes say yes and no -- but you are not listening.

When you listen, you become just a passage, a passivity, a receptivity, a womb: you become feminine. And to arrive one has to become feminine. You cannot reach God as aggressive invaders, conquerors. You can reach God only... or it will be better: God can reach you only when you are receptive, a feminine receptivity. When you become yin, a receptivity, the door is open. And you wait.

Listening is the art for becoming passive. Buddha has emphasized listening so much, Mahavir has emphasized listening so much, Krishnamurti goes on emphasizing right listening so much. The ears are symbolic. Have you watched?

Your ears are nothing but passages, just holes -- nothing else. Your ears are more feminine than your eyes; your eyes are more male. Your ears are a yin part; your eyes are a yang part. When you look at somebody, you are aggressive. When you listen to somebody, you are receptive.

That's why looking at somebody for too long a time becomes vulgar, impolite, unmannerly. There is a certain limit; psychologists say three seconds. If you look at a person for three seconds it's okay; it can be tolerated. More than that, then you are not looking -- you are staring; you are offending the person; you are trespassing.

But listening to a person has no limit, because ears cannot trespass. They simply remain wherever they are. Eyes need rest. Have you seen in the night -- eyes need rest, ears need no rest. They are open twenty-four hours -- year in, year out. Eyes cannot remain open even for minutes -- continuous blinking, continuously tiring. Aggression tires, because aggression takes your energy out; so the eyes have to blink continuously to rest. It is a continuous rest. Ears are rested always.

That's why music has been used by many religions as an approach towards prayer -- because music will make your ears more vibrant, more sensitive. One has to become more of the ears and less of the eyes.

"GREAT WAVES IS YOUR NAME, SO STAY IN THIS TEMPLE TONIGHT AND LISTEN TO THE WAVES OF THE SEA."

"You just become ears," said the master. "You just listen. There is nothing else to do -- just go on listening with no idea why, with no idea of what is happening. Just go on listening with no interpretation, with no activity on your part." And then:

"IMAGINE YOU ARE THOSE WAVES."

"First listen, get in tune with the waves, and when you feel that now you are completely silent and receptive, then imagine that you are those waves. That is the second step. First: don't be aggressive; become receptive. And when you have become receptive, then just melt into those waves, start imagining that you are those waves."

The master is giving him a device so that he can forget his self, the ego. First step is receptivity, because in receptivity ego cannot exist -- it can exist only in conflict. And when you are receptive, suddenly your faculty of imagination becomes tremendously powerful.

Receptive people, sensitive people, are imaginative people. Those who can see the greenery of the trees, just without any aggression on their part, not even a subtle aggression on their part, who can just drink the greenery of the trees, who can simply absorb it as if they are sponges -- they become very creative, they become very imaginative. These are the poets, the painters, the dancers, the musicians -- they absorb the universe in deep receptivity, and then they pour whatsoever they have absorbed into their imagination.

Imagination is the one faculty you have which comes closest to God. God must have a great imagination -- mm? -- just look at His world! Just to think! -- such an imaginative world, with so many flowers and so many butterflies and so many trees and so many rivers, and so many people. Just think about His imagination! With so many stars, and so many worlds -- worlds beyond worlds, non-ending.... He must be a great dreamer.

In the East, Hindus say the world is God's dream, His imagination. The world is His magic, His imagination. He is dreaming it. We are part of His dream.

When the master said to O-nami, "Then you imagine yourself as those waves," he was saying, "Then you become creative. First you become receptive and then you become creative. And once you have dropped your ego, you become so flexible that whatsoever you imagine will happen. Then your imagination will become your reality."

"FORGET YOU ARE A WRESTLER AND BECOME THOSE HUGE WAVES SWEEPING EVERYTHING BEFORE THEM."

O-NAMI REMAINED. HE TRIED TO THINK ONLY OF THE WAVES...

Of course, it was difficult in the beginning: HE THOUGHT OF MANY THINGS. It is natural -- but he remained. He must have been very patient. THEN GRADUALLY HE DID THINK ONLY OF THE WAVES. Then a moment came.... If you pursue, if you persist, one moment is bound to come when the thing that you have been desiring for many lives happens -- but patience is needed.

THEN GRADUALLY HE DID THINK ONLY OF THE WAVES. THEY ROLLED LARGER AND LARGER AS THE NIGHT WORE ON

Now these are not the real waves of the ocean that are rolling larger and larger. Now there is no distinction between his waves of imagination and the real waves. That distinction is lost. Now he does not know what is what; what is dream and what is real he does not know. He has become a small child again. Only children have that capacity.

In the morning you can find a child weeping for a toy he had seen in the dream, and he wants it back, and he says, "Where is my toy?" And you go on insisting that it was just a dream, but he says, "Still, where is it now?" He makes no distinction between the dream and the waking. He knows no distinctions. He knows reality as one.

When you become very receptive, you become childlike.

Now these waves:

THEY ROLLED LARGER AND LARGER AS THE NIGHT WORE ON. THEY SWEPT AWAY THE FLOWERS IN THE VASES BEFORE THE BUDDHA, THEY SWEPT AWAY THE VASES. Not only that -- EVEN THE BRONZE BUDDHA WAS SWEPT AWAY.

This is beautiful! It is very difficult for a Buddhist to imagine that the Buddha is being swept away. If he had been too much attached to his religion, that would have been the point where he would have been completely cut off from his imagination. He would have said, "Enough is enough! Buddha being swept away! -- what am I doing? No, I am no more a wave. " He would have stopped at the feet of the Buddha, he would have touched the feet of the Buddha, but not more than that.

But remember: one day, even those feet that have helped you tremendously on the path, they have to go; Buddhas also have to be swept away. Because the door can become a hindrance if you cling to it.

LARGER AND LARGER -- THEY SWEPT AWAY THE FLOWERS IN THE VASES BEFORE THE BUDDHA, THEY SWEPT AWAY THE VASES. EVEN THE BRONZE BUDDHA WAS SWEPT AWAY. BY DAWN THE TEMPLE WAS ONLY SURGING WATER...

Not that it really happened: it happened to O-nami. Remember it: if you had been in that temple that time, you would not have seen the surging water in the temple -- it was happening only to O-nami. It was happening in a totally different dimension of his being. It is the dimension of poetry, imagination, dream; the intuitive, the feminine, the childlike; innocence.

He had opened the doors of his imaginative faculty. By listening to the waves, by becoming receptive, he became imaginative. His imagination flowered as a thousand-and-one-petalled lotus.

BY DAWN THE TEMPLE WAS ONLY SURGING WATER, AND O-NAMI SAT THERE WITH A FAINT SMILE ON HIS FACE.

HE BECAME A BUDDHA! The same faint smile as one day came to Buddha under the Bodhi Tree must have come to O-nami, Suddenly he was no more there! -- and that was the smile, the smile of coming back home. The smile that one has arrived. The smile that now there is no longer anywhere to go. The smile that one has reached the source. The smile that one has died and is resurrected.

O-NAMI SAT THERE WITH A FAINT SMILE ON HIS FACE.

THAT DAY HE ENTERED THE PUBLIC WRESTLING AND WON EVERY BOUT, AND FROM THAT DAY NO ONE IN JAPAN COULD EVER THROW HIM.

Because now it is not his energy. He is no more O-nami -- he is no more the waves, he is the ocean now. How can you defeat the ocean? You can only defeat the waves.

Once you have dropped the ego you have dropped all defeat, all failure, all frustration. Carry the ego and you are doomed to failure. Carry the ego and you will remain weak. Drop the ego and infinite strength starts flowing through you. By dropping the ego you become a river, you start flowing, you start melting, you start streaming -- you become alive.